Tens of thousands still without power in Atlantic Canada one week after Fiona

Each part of Parry Aftab’s day involves intensive troubleshooting after more than a week without electricity or running water in her Prince Edward Island community, which was devastated by post-tropical storm Fiona.

She had to figure out how to wash her clothes, flush her toilet, and cook a meal more interesting than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And she hasn’t even thought about taking a shower.

Three days ago, Ms Aftab, 71, and her husband managed to get their hands on a small generator, but it costs $100 a day in gasoline to run, and most nearby gas stations can’t pump fuel without electricity. At night, she needs the generator to power her sleep apnea medical device. But the generator dies after five hours, so she wakes up in the middle of the night to restart it.

“No one knows how long it will be before power is restored,” said Ms Aftab, who lives in Point Prim on the island’s south coast. “You sit there and you’re so happy for your friends when they get power again and you’re just thinking: how much longer?”

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Nothing comes easy for the tens of thousands of maritime homes that, more than a week after Fiona struck Atlantic Canada, are still without power, devastating infrastructure and washing entire homes into the sea.

PEI’s Maritime Electric said 94 percent of homes in the province lost power at the height of the storm, representing about 80,000 customers. Around 22,000 PEI customers were still without electricity on Sunday evening. In Nova Scotia, 27,000 customers were left without power from a peak of more than 400,000.

Utilities in both provinces hoped to fix the majority of the remaining outages over the next few days, but a timeline has yet to be drawn up for thousands of homes in more remote areas. Meanwhile, hurricane-related outages were no longer reported online at utilities in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec.

Lia MacDonald, Nova Scotia Power’s strike director for the province’s northeastern region, said much of the remaining outages are in her region and in Cape Breton, where hundreds of utility poles are so damaged they need to be replaced.

In many areas, large uprooted trees are hampering repair crews – some so tall they can only be lifted by cranes.

“What we are seeing is unprecedented damage,” said Ms MacDonald, who added that the challenges posed by the outages are affecting her own staff in terms of housing workers in hotels and how to feed them.

“We understand and feel how difficult this is for our customers. … We are focused on restoring everything as safely and quickly as possible.”

Maritime Electric spokesman Kim Griffin said many homes are having to replace individual hardware and need help from electricians who were in short supply even before Fiona.

“I’ve never seen destruction like this,” said Ms. Griffin, who grew up at PEI and has worked for the utility for 15 years.

“There will be at least thousands of individual failures that are individual, crew-to-crew and very labor intensive.”

In the meantime, the losses for the residents who are still without electricity are piling up.

Ms Aftab said she had several fridges and freezers full of groceries, including four turkeys and four hams, for a large Thanksgiving dinner she was planning to host for 60 people, but they all broke when she lost power. In all, she lost about $3,000 worth of groceries.

She also lost four months of diabetes shots worth more than $3,000. She can only heat water on the grill, so all her cookware is slowly being destroyed.

However, the positive side is the way parishioners have gathered around each other, Ms Aftab said.

All posts in their local Facebook groups are followed by neighbors who immediately show up at their door with help.

When she asked online how to wash dishes without running water over the weekend, someone was at her door with extra water. Others with generators have offered their washers and dryers or brought the couple hot soup and tea in a thermos.

Ms. Aftab, who is originally from the United States and recently relocated to PEI, said she was blown away by the hospitality.

“These are things you see on TV or read in feel-good articles,” Ms. Aftab said. “The people all over the island were amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”