BANGOR, Maine — Central Maine Power Co. repair crews were working Tuesday to determine the cause of a series of power outages that affected nearly 2,000 customers in the Bucksport area.
Though the utility reported slightly more than 2,700 systemwide outages as of 5:30 p.m., Bucksport, Orland and Verona accounted for about 1,880 of those accounts, according to spokeswoman Gail Rice.
“We don’t know [what caused the Bucksport-area outages]. We’ve been having problems with that circuit serving Bucksport, Orland, Verona and a tiny piece of Ellsworth,” she said. We’ve been having problems with that several times today.
“We had two outages there this morning and then this later one this afternoon,” she said. “We’re still not sure what caused that. It could be wind related because its pretty breezy out there, but to have it happen three times on the same circuit on the same day is rather strange.”
By 6 p.m., service had been restored to the Bucksport area and the number of CMP customers without power dropped to about 150.
Rice said early Tuesday evening that some of the company’s smaller outages likely were because of high winds. Cumberland County had nearly 500 customers out, while another 300 affected accounts were in Oxford County.