The storm that brought high winds and heavy rain to Maine overnight Wednesday into Thursday left nearly 70 percent of Versant power customers in Aroostook County without electricity.
A total of 24,386 customers in Aroostook were affected as of 5 a.m. Thursday, according to Versant’s power outage map. The outages were throughout the County. Versant has a total of 34,957 customers in Aroostook.
At 11 a.m. Versant said Aroostook outages were reduced to 23,795.
The 4 p.m. update said there were still 16,968 County customers without electric service.
At 9 p.m. Versant reported all but one Aroostook customer’s power had been restored.
Versant reported 64,037 customers affected statewide in its coverage area. It has 164,347 customers. At 11 a.m. the total had been reduced to 60,009 without power. At 4 p.m. it was 39,992. At 9 p.m. it was 8,295.
In a statement, Versant said it has a full complement of repair and tree crews deployed to address outages caused by the high winds.
Crews are prioritizing public safety issues, such as reports of downed lines. Utility workers who are not responding to public safety issues are assessing damage which is necessary to plan to bring the most customers online at a time.
Customers are urged to stay clear of downed lines or trees in contact with them. Workers will remain in the field making repairs until all customers are fully restored.
Restoration is expected to continue over several days. Here’s the Live Outage Map.
The storm also brought heavy rain to the area. Below are some rain totals:
Aroostook
— Grand Isle, 2.98 inches
— Caribou, 2.42 inches
— Frenchville Airport, 2.40 inches
— Linneus, 2.15 inches
— Monticello, 2.14 inches
— Clayton Lake, 2.05 inches
— Houlton, 2.04 inches
— Fort Kent, 2.02 inches
— Caribou, 1.98 inches
— Westfield, 1.72 inches
— Presque Isle Airport, 1.63 inches
— Madawaska, 1.59 inches
— Woodland, 1.31 inches
— Nine-Mile Bridge, 1 inches
