Canadian lineman Noah Clowater holds a bilingual stop sign while directing traffic while his coworkers restore power, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in Yarmouth, Maine. The New Brunswick, Canada, crew were among the hundreds of line and tree workers from as far away as Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia that have come to Maine following Monday’s storm that knocked out power to nearly two-thirds of the state. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
PORTLAND (AP) — Hundreds of out-of-state utility crews were in Maine on Thursday to help the state recover from a strong storm that left about 1.5 million Northeast homes and businesses without power.
Maine was one of the hardest hit states with nearly 500,000 customers in the dark at one point on Monday.
Utility companies reported that the number of outages in the state was down to about 140,000 on Thursday morning.
Central Maine Power and Emera Maine, the two major utilities in the state, said they had a total of 2,800 people in the field working to restore power. CMP said it had more than 500 line crews and more than 200 pole-setting crews at work on Thursday.
About 500 of the people in the field were from Emera, who also had dozens of crews at work.
Some schools and public services remained closed on Thursday. The storm also disrupted train service from Brunswick, Maine, to Boston.
Other states were also still feeling the effects of the storm, which peaked early Monday. In Rhode Island, Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo ordered a review of that state’s main utility in response to the storm as thousands remained without power there.
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