P.E.I. power outage now affecting 10,000 customers

Maritime Electric said Friday evening it will call in nine crews from New Brunswick to work overnight as the utility struggles to restore electricity to customers after a wet, heavy snowfall.

As of about 5:15p.m.there were 10,000 customers without power. That number had peaked at 22,000 in the morning, and fluctuated throughout the day. At about 4:00 p.m. there were 6,000 customers without power but that jumped back up an hour later.

There have been outages right across the province.

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Will work through the night

"These are a lot of smaller and community outages that we've working on to try and restore across the Island," said Maritime Electric spokeswoman Kim Griffin.

"We are stll trying to have the majority of our customers on tonight but we expect there are going to be people into tomorrow," said Griffin.

"So we are keeping our crews out all night and our customer service centre open."

Downed power lines 'a huge concern'

Maritime Electric was asking customers to report downed power lines, and to stay away from them. So far they've found about 300 lines down.

Griffin saidthere was a real problem for crews today in the Scotchfort area, when a power line went down in the Hillsborough River.

Griffin said brokenlines in Desablewerecleared from the highway this morning, where they were backing uptraffic. Downed lines also closed the Morell Bridge.

Other downed lines werealong Knight's Lane in Souris, the Rattenbury Road at the intersection with Route 6, and Roche Lane in the Malpeque area.

Snowfall warnings were in effect throughout the province overnight, but ended by Friday morning.

"It's not a race day today," RCMP tweeted. "Slow down, drive for the conditions and arrive alive."

Provincial government workers got some extra time to get to work civil service offices delayed opening until 10:30 a.m.

UPEI and Holland College also delayed opening.

Northumberland Ferries cancelled its 8 and 9:30 a.m. crossings, but resumed sailing at 11:15.