Many people living in Lunenburg, N.S., and surrounding communities were left in the dark over the weekend, after a planned power outage dragged on much longer than expected.
Businesses were forced to close and some homes went without heating for hours as temperatures dropped well below freezing.
Melissa Duggan said the experience was made especially difficult because both her children were sick and her daughter was recovering from pneumonia at the time.
Nova Scotia Power initially told customers power would be cut off late Saturday night and be restored by 7 a.m. Sunday as part of a planned outage to improve service reliability.
But Duggan said the outage dragged on and there was no communication about when the outage would end.
“It was freezing in the house. We had no way to heat the house, no way to make food, no way to know, really, when the power was going to come on,” she said.
Temperatures dropped to -11 C overnight, and Duggan says she was shocked when she woke up the next day without electricity.
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“With my daughter having pneumonia I was worried about her breathing and her being freezing cold. And we just didn’t know when to expect anything to change,” she said.
Eventually, her power was restored that afternoon.
Others have told Global News and the town’s mayor that their outages lasted over 24 hours.
To make matters worse, Duggan points out she received no updates as to why it was taking longer than expected.
“People who weren’t on social media wouldn’t have gotten notice in the first place,” she said.
Down the road at Salt Shaker Deli, the outage forced the restaurant to lose nearly a full day of business.
Owner Martin Salvador says he was upset.
“It’s normal behaviour. The power gets shut off all the time here and you usually get no answers about it,” he said.
He says between his other restaurants, he lost about $10,000 on Sunday and 24 employees were unable to work.
Lunenburg Mayor Jamie Myra met with Nova Scotia Power on Monday to voice concern.
“And we all agree, this can’t happen the way it did again,” said Myra.
In a statement to Global News, the utility apologized to the people in the area and stated the outage did not go as planned, and “lasted much longer than anticipated.”
Nova Scotia Power says it is working with local officials to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
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