Pity the Nova Scotia Power line crews.
After spending Christmas away from their families working on power lines, they couldn’t even ring in the new year at home.
The overnight blizzard knocked out power to more than 2,600 people throughout the province as of Thursday morning.
“We had whiteout conditions overnight and early this morning. There was freezing rain in Cape Breton,” said NS Power spokeswoman Glennie Langille.
“In these kinds of conditions sometimes we have trouble moving our crews around. But so far they’ve been able to work safely.”
The areas most effected include Truro, Goshen, Port Hawkesbury and across Guysborough County. Power crews worked throughout the day, but by 5 p.m. Thursday, 6,173 households still couldn’t turn the lights on.
There’s no doubt it was a vicious storm, but it didn’t cause anywhere near the damage done by the storm a few days before Christmas.
In that one, high winds and falling trees knocked out power to close to 60,000 people at its peak. Overwhelmed, repair crews took days to get everyone back online. Additional teams from NB Power came over to help with the work.
But still, about 15,000 customers woke up Christmas morning to discover Santa hadn’t given them any power. That number was cut to a third by mid-afternoon and by the evening only a few hundred were left.
