MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Many public utility employees in New Hampshire and Maine spent Thanksgiving working to restore power to those left in the dark by the Thanksgiving Eve storm.
By Friday morning, thousands of people had the lights back on, officials said. But tens of thousands still remained without electricity.
Public Service of New Hampshire said about 22 percent of its customers, more than 100,000 homes and businesses, still had no power at 9:45 a.m. Friday. About 207,000 lost power at some point.The
The company said the power failures were the fourth worst in its history. The storm dumped more than a foot of snow in some parts of the state -- 18 inches in Madison on the Maine border.
Related
As the sun set on Thanksgiving, one-quarter of the population of Manchester, the state's largest city, still had no power.
For many people, the power failures meant a change of Thanksgiving plans.
"We're going to order Chinese or something," Deb Smith of Auburn told the Manchester Union-Leader during half-time at a football game. "We'll save the bird; it's still in the fridge."
Central Maine Power said about 22,000 of its customers were still without power Friday morning, down from more than 100,000. The southern coast was hit hardest.
The storm that moved up the East Coast on Wednesday fouled the highways on the busiest travel day of the year and brought heavy wet snow to mountain areas in the south and mid-Atlantic and the coast of northern New England.
A few thousand homes and businesses in the Hudson Valley and Catskills in New York State still had no power Friday morning.
