More than 2,300 crew members are working to restore power across the state after the rain and wind storm that knocked out electricity to more than 400,000 Central Maine Power customers Monday.
That number was down to 100,000 Thursday night, with estimates to have nearly all power restored by the end of Saturday.
Androscoggin County still had 5,000 outages as of 6:45 p.m. Thursday. Durham, Lisbon, Poland and Auburn each had more than 500 outages remaining; Durham was the highest at 1,200.
Franklin County was down to 1,300 outages and Oxford County was down to 3,400.
The Maine Emergency Management Agency has 103 warming and emergency shelters open across 13 counties to help people still without power.
Cumberland County has 33 open and York County has 19. Those are the two counties with the most outages remaining.
Androscoggin County has three shelters: the YMCA in Auburn, the Hasty Community Center in Auburn and the Lisbon Town Office. West Paris, Brownfield and Woodstock also have open warming centers.
CMP said line and tree workers have come from as far away as Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.
“We want to thank our many partners in this effort — including the Maine Emergency Management Agency, local EMAs, and countless other state and local agencies,” CMP President and CEO Sara Burns said Thursday in a news release.
“The crews and support personnel engaged in this recovery effort — from CMP, our affiliates and mutual aid partners — have also done an outstanding job,” Burns said. “They’ve worked long hours and restored power to more than a quarter-million customers without a single safety incident or injury.”
Burns thanked customers for their patience and understanding over the past several days of storm recovery.
The silver lining of this storm is that here have been no deaths or serious injuries despite power outages that exceeded those of the infamous ice storm of 1998.
Maine Department of Public Safety Spokesman Stephen McCausland said, “This crisis is not over yet, but it is encouraging to all of us in public safety that there have been no major injuries or deaths attributed to this storm.”
McCausland did caution that now is not the time for complacency as streetlights remain out, hundreds of utility crews remain on duty, and portable generators and chain saws remain in constant use.
Even though there have been no deaths, there were several near misses: A CMP worker suffered a glancing blow from a falling tree limb while working in a bucket truck; a couple suffered carbon-monoxide symptoms from a generator; and generators caused several small fires.
Emergency officials implored weary residents still in the dark to be careful and avoid mistakes that could lead to injury.
Some schools and public services remained closed Thursday. The storm also disrupted train service from Brunswick to Boston.
Canadian lineman Noah Clowater holds a bilingual stop sign while directing traffic as his co-workers restore power Wednesday in Yarmouth. The New Brunswick, Canada, crew was among the hundreds of line and tree workers from as far away as Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia that have come to Maine following Monday’s storm that knocked out power to nearly two-thirds of the state. (Associated Press photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
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