Restoring power in N.B. complicated by power surges

Days later, thousands of people remain in the dark across southern New Brunswick.

NB Power is asking people to turn off unnecessary appliances, and to keep heat and lights low to "avoid load issues when power's restored."

"This is an issue that is causing extra problems for our crews re-energizing lines and restoringpower. Fuses are blowing due to excess load," the utility tweeted on Boxing Day.

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More than 30,000 power customers in New Brunswick were forced to celebrate Christmas in the dark. Days after the ice storm there are still more than 18,000 NB Power customers without power.

The utility said it could be New Year's Eve before some homes in New Brunswick have power.

As of 2 p.m. on Thursday, nearly 11,000 in the Saint John suburb of Rothesay remained without power, as well as another 6,846in St. Stephen, 1,167 in Moncton,2,267 in Sussex and 147 customers in Fredericton.

Deb Nobes, a spokesperson for NB Power, said more than 150crews are still working to restore power for thousands of people in New Brunswick. She said they're still having trouble keeping up.

"You can gain ground in one area, then look behind and there are more outages happening, so we're just trying to go at this piece by piece and win as much as we can and keep going until everyone is re-connected," she said.

The utility said it has restored power to nearly 100,000 customers since Monday as many have lost power more than once during these storms.

NB Power says it's hoping that most people will have their power restored by Saturday.

Fresh crews from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have travelled to New Brunswick to give N.B. crews some much-needed rest.