Many Aroostook County residents awoke to an unexpected surprise on Christmas morning; any presents that Santa might have left them were under an un-lit Christmas tree. High winds caused power outages in The County on Dec. 25, which hindered the holiday plans of many community members. “Based on the reports, the longest outages I’ve seen were in Fort Fairfield,” said District Manager for the Caribou district for Maine Public Service Company Herman Condon, “Some Fort Fairfield residents were without power for as long as four hours and 56 minutes.”
The outage reports Condon received indicated that 3,876 customers lost power in the Caribou and Ft. Kent districts, though the disruptions experienced by customers in the Ft. Kent district were shorter than the outages customers in the Caribou district faced.
“Wind basically caused all of the outages,” said Condon, “in Ft. Fairfield, the wind blew so hard and the cables are so heavy that the pole supporting them broke. We had to put in a new pole and install new hardware on it,” Condon added. A large tree that had fallen onto a power line caused the outages in Caribou; service disruption in Limestone was also caused by tree damage.
Though some Aroostook residents adapted to the lack of power by delaying the cooking of their holiday meals, cooking on an outdoor grill, or reading holiday gift tags with a flashlight, 7 year lineman with the Maine Public Service Company Steve Sager had his Christmas plans significantly altered as he worked 10 hours on Christmas restoring power.
Sager received notice at 7:45 a.m. that it was time for him to go to work.
“My daughter said it was the strangest Christmas she’d had,” Sager said, “the power at our home went off at 9 a.m. and we didn’t open presents until Christmas night. My family and I usually open gifts together in the morning and meet with our other relatives around 1 p.m. for a holiday meal,” Sager added.
Lineman for the Maine Public Service Company rotate through a weekly on-call schedule so that someone is always ready should power services become disrupted.
“In every district, we always have a person that’s on stand by,” Condon said, “they know that they can be called out at any time.”
Though the lack of power was an uncontrollable inconvenience for many Aroostook residents, Sager still found a way to have a merry Christmas.
“You make the best of it when you get there,” he said, “my family realizes that being on call is part of my job. My children are teenagers, so they’re more understanding than younger kids.”
“For us on the job, we know it doesn’t matter what day it is because keeping the power flowing is our job,” Sager added, “we know power is a necessity at our home and our customers homes, so when it’s time to go to work, we go to work; it’s a pride thing for us to get the power back on as soon as we can.”
“When the power goes out, it doesn’t matter what the weather is or what day it is, we know that we have to do whatever we can to restore it,” Condon added.
Many residents who experienced outages called the Maine Public Service Company to report the service disruptions, which is something that the power company encourages.
“The system itself knows the second that the power goes out,” explained Condon, “but there’s are times when customers call in about a downed service wire that is still on; our system wouldn’t pick that up,” Condon said, “we always encourage our customers to call in whenever there is an outage.”
The outage reports Condon received indicated that 3,876 customers lost power in the Caribou and Ft. Kent districts, though the disruptions experienced by customers in the Ft. Kent district were shorter than the outages customers in the Caribou district faced.
“Wind basically caused all of the outages,” said Condon, “in Ft. Fairfield, the wind blew so hard and the cables are so heavy that the pole supporting them broke. We had to put in a new pole and install new hardware on it,” Condon added. A large tree that had fallen onto a power line caused the outages in Caribou; service disruption in Limestone was also caused by tree damage.
Though some Aroostook residents adapted to the lack of power by delaying the cooking of their holiday meals, cooking on an outdoor grill, or reading holiday gift tags with a flashlight, 7 year lineman with the Maine Public Service Company Steve Sager had his Christmas plans significantly altered as he worked 10 hours on Christmas restoring power.
Sager received notice at 7:45 a.m. that it was time for him to go to work.
“My daughter said it was the strangest Christmas she’d had,” Sager said, “the power at our home went off at 9 a.m. and we didn’t open presents until Christmas night. My family and I usually open gifts together in the morning and meet with our other relatives around 1 p.m. for a holiday meal,” Sager added.
Lineman for the Maine Public Service Company rotate through a weekly on-call schedule so that someone is always ready should power services become disrupted.
“In every district, we always have a person that’s on stand by,” Condon said, “they know that they can be called out at any time.”
Though the lack of power was an uncontrollable inconvenience for many Aroostook residents, Sager still found a way to have a merry Christmas.
“You make the best of it when you get there,” he said, “my family realizes that being on call is part of my job. My children are teenagers, so they’re more understanding than younger kids.”
“For us on the job, we know it doesn’t matter what day it is because keeping the power flowing is our job,” Sager added, “we know power is a necessity at our home and our customers homes, so when it’s time to go to work, we go to work; it’s a pride thing for us to get the power back on as soon as we can.”
“When the power goes out, it doesn’t matter what the weather is or what day it is, we know that we have to do whatever we can to restore it,” Condon added.
Many residents who experienced outages called the Maine Public Service Company to report the service disruptions, which is something that the power company encourages.
“The system itself knows the second that the power goes out,” explained Condon, “but there’s are times when customers call in about a downed service wire that is still on; our system wouldn’t pick that up,” Condon said, “we always encourage our customers to call in whenever there is an outage.”
