Thousands bearing up as power outage takes toll
GARDINER, Maine – By Thursday, Bob and Katrina Johnson had grown weary of lugging around a portable generator to prevent a freezer-load of moose meat from spoiling and to keep her mother’s home warm.
The Maine couple spent Christmas Eve at a family member’s home without electricity. Christmas morning found them at their own home without power. And to complete their holiday, they traveled to a third darkened home to exchange gifts that afternoon.
“You have to go with the flow and adapt, and do the best you can,” Katrina Johnson said Thursday, before their power was restored. “You learn how to deal with it. Do you like it? No, but you deal with it.”
Utility officials said it could be days longer before power is restored to everyone after a weekend ice storm that turned out the lights from Michigan to Maine and into Canada.
People shivered for a seventh day as a new storm blew through the upper Midwest and Northeast, shutting down part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike after a pileup involving 35 vehicles. Ten people were hospitalized with injuries from the crash. Another pileup on Interstate 78 in eastern Pennsylvania involving 25 to 30 vehicles sent 25 people to hospitals.
In Michigan, where about half a million homes and businesses lost power at the storm’s peak, utilities reported that 97,000 customers remained without power Thursday evening and said it could be Saturday before all electricity is restored.
In Maine, more snow added to the misery for utility crews working long hours in eastern Maine and parts of the state’s interior.
Most utility customers in Maine were expected to have their lights on by week’s end, but there were some pockets where damage was so severe it could take until New Year’s Day.
Maine reported more than 20,000 customers were still in the dark, down from a high of more than 106,000. There were more than 101,000 without power Thursday afternoon in three Canadian provinces – Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick – including 54,000 in Toronto.