Some in Essex County face another night without power as crews repair storm damage

Nearly 48 hours after high winds and freezing rain began pummelling the Windsor-Essex region, power crews were still working to restore service to some customers.

Around 5,200 Hydro One customers in Essex County and 1,900 customers in Chatham-Kent were still without power as of 3:00 p.m. Friday, according to company spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa.

Chatham-Kent should see power restored by 11 p.m., she said, but some people in Essex County may spend another night in the dark.

Asked what she would say to people who are getting impatient with the repair times, Baccega Rosa said, "We have every available resource on it." 

As crews finish helping other parts of storm-ravaged southern Ontario, they are being moved into Essex County, she said. 

'We're doing absolutely everything that we can'

Around 400 or 500 E.L.K. Energy customers in the Town of Essex were still in the dark, as of 2 p.m., said Farooq Hyder, the company's manager of engineering and operations.

It also had crews working in Harrow and Kingsville.

Some customers were dealing with what Hyder called "part power," which might prevent appliances that run on 240 volts from operating properly, he said.

He could not provide an estimate as to when power would be fully restored. 

"We're doing absolutely everything that we can [so] we can have everybody back on as soon as possible," Hyder said.

"Obviously we don't want to go into another night without power, but it's very hard to determine."

E.L.K. gets its power from Hydro One, which was also facing outages, Hyder added.

Only when the province-wide utility repaired its lines did E.L.K. discover some of the problems with its own.

Essex Powerlines was reporting just two small outages as of 3 p.m. Friday, affecting less than 50 customers in the areas of LaSalle and Amherstburg. 

More than 800 services requests related to trees

It anticipated restoring power to those neighbourhoods by 8 p.m. according to its website. 

Around 230 Enwin customers were still without power in the City of Windsor as of approximately 2:45 p.m, according to its website.

The majority of them were in South Windsor, and the company posted on Twitter that power should be restored to them around 6 p.m. 

In a news release issued Thursday, the company blamed the majority of the outages on trees and branches that had fallen on power lines as a result of the storm.

The City of Windsor told CBC it received more than 800 service requests related to downed trees, branches and limbs.