High winds knocked out power to thousands of Central Maine Power Co. customers in the central Maine area Monday morning. By 9 p.m., the number of outages was down to 9,106 across the state from a high of about 31,000.

According to CMP’s website, Oxford County customers were hit hardest with 6,494 outages as of 11:30 a.m. That represents roughly 16% of the power company’s 41,645 customers in that county. By 9 p.m. 1,612 were still waiting for power, mostly in Andover, Bethel, Gilead and Woodstock.

In Franklin County, 987 customers were still without power by 9 p.m., mostly in Carrabassett Valley, Madrid, Salem and Weld.

Least affected in the tri-county area was Androscoggin, where 1,151 customers, or about 2% of that county’s 57,214 total customer base, had lost power. By 9 p.m. that number was down 69.

The company was responding to the outages by deploying its 200 internal line workers who were aided by an additional 180 contracted line workers and 218 tree workers, according to a CMP spokeswoman.

“We are responding as quickly as we can with an emphasis on safety in the face of some very strong winds today,” Kerri Theriault, CMP’s director of electric operations, said.

“We understand how frustrating it is to be without power, especially when customers are seeing blue skies outside their window,” she said in a media statement. “Safety is our top priority and we are not able to send our line workers up in buckets when winds are dangerously high, like what we are seeing today. We will continue to make progress wherever and whenever we can, as quickly as possible.”

As of noon Monday, CMP was reporting about 31,000 outages companywide. With winds forecast to persist into Monday evening, it is likely that outages will continue to occur even while CMP makes progress on restoration efforts, according to the statement.

CMP was working closely with local and county emergency management officials to ensure roads are cleared of any downed wires and/or debris and to understand local restoration priorities.

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