Some CMP customers may be without power until Wednesday

By Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News Staff

Calling Saturday’s nor’easter “one of the biggest storms in terms of damage this century,” the head of Central Maine Power Co. said Monday that customers in the hardest-hit areas of the state may be without power until Wednesday.

David Flanagan, executive chairman of CMP, said the biggest challenges are 185 broken poles along with trees downed by heavy snow and ice, many of them in Oxford, northern Cumberland, Somerset, Kennebec and Piscataquis counties, which he said were the areas most affected by the storm.

“Each pole requires considerable time, work and crews to get back in place,” he said.

Flanagan said CMP has more than 1,500 workers trying to restore power, 200 of them its own linesmen plus contract workers from Maine and out-of-state partners.

Right after the storm some 233,000 CMP customers were without power, and all but 60,000 have had power restored as of Monday. Most customers in Piscataquis, Somerset and Kennebec counties can expect to have power back by Tuesday night. Those in Franklin and northern Cumberland counties are expected to see power back by Wednesday night, Flanagan said. The company has about 630,000 customers in central and southern Maine.

The company is redeploying crews once they are finished in other parts of the state to the hard-hit areas, he said.

Despite efforts to prepare for storms by cutting trees in its rights of way, Flanagan said, many of the downed trees are large and have fallen from outside of the area where it is allowed to cut them down.