Central Maine Power was bringing in crews from New Brunswick and the Canadian maritimes Monday morning to help restore power to Maine.

An estimated 171,000 customers were without electricity as of 8 a.m. Monday, the day after a windy Hurricane Irene blew through the state. CMP Spokesperson Gail Rice said the company hoped to move quickly Monday getting power restored.

“Yesterday we spent most of the day making safe around downed lines,” she said. “So we were able to make a few repairs Sunday, but with the winds still blowing it was really hard to make any real progress. So today, we hope to take a big bite out of the damage assessment and get service back to some of the larger pockets.”

Rice said that Cumberland, York and Kennebec counties were the hardest hit by electrical power outages. Androscoggin County had an estimated 19,800 homes without power Monday morning. Oxford County had an estimated 16,900 as of 8 a.m.

“The ground was damp to begin with before the storm,” she said. “The root systems become unstable and the trees just toppled over.”

In Lewiston at least, the damage could have been much worse, according to City Arborist Steve Murch. Murch said gusts in Lewiston reached about 35 to 40 miles-per-hour at the city’s Sabattus Street monitoring station.

“That’s usually enough to bring down branches but not whole trees,” he said. “A normal tree can withstand that easily. A lot of these things that broke were weak branches or areas where there’s rot — not that it makes it any better for somebody when your power’s out or the tree is on your car.”

Murch said the storm was at its worst for about 5 hours Sunday afternoon, from 3 p.m. to about 8 p.m.

“We had about ten of us in yesterday, putting up signs and barricades so people were not running into downed wires,” Murch said.

His crew stopped about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, but back in early Monday morning.

“I think we’ll spend a good part of the week on this,” Murch said. “A good part of it depends on CMP right now. There are eight to ten locations now where there are trees down that we can’t do anything about because there are wires. We can’t handle that until CMP comes and clears the wire.”

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