Strong winds that began Tuesday night and continued into Wednesday led to power outages that affected more than 50,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers, including thousands in the Augusta and Waterville areas.

CMP reported Thursday its line workers and other contractors worked through the night Tuesday and Wednesday to make repairs.

Gusts knocked out power at about 7 p.m. Wednesday night in parts of Kennebec County, including Waterville, and in Franklin and Somerset counties.

At that time, CMP reported 6,091 outages in Franklin County, 3,452 in Somerset County and 1,044 in Kennebec County.

The peak number of outages in Kennebec County was about 2,600 at about 9 p.m. Wednesday, according to CMP spokeswoman Catharine Hartnett.

Waterville experienced two outages, both caused by tree limbs falling onto power lines. One outage occurred early Wednesday, lasting about 2 1/2 hours and affecting 342 customers. The other outage lasted from 7:14 p.m. to 7:54 p.m. Wednesday and affected 720 customers, Hartnett said.

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, 4,616 CMP customers remained without electricity, including 1,881 in Franklin County, 824 in Somerset County and 81 in Kennebec County, with none in Waterville.

CMP reported Thursday that 53,700 customers had been affected by the outages, with power having been restored to more than 45,000 customers.

The most customers without power at one time during the outages was 17,390, according to CMP.


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