Misery lingered from Tropical Storm Irene on Wednesday, but there were moments of sweet relief, too.

In the middle of the afternoon, power was restored to parts of Auburn that had been without for days. Around the same time, lights went on inside homes and businesses in Lewiston for the first time since Saturday.

For most of Wednesday, Time Warner customers found themselves without familiar comforts — cable television, phone and Internet services were disrupted. Time Warner reported in a phone message that it was experiencing widespread outages throughout Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire due to flooding from Irene.

And then, at about 6 p.m., joy. Time Warner customers in Lewiston and Auburn reported service was restored.

Central Maine Power crews were still working on remaining outages. In Lewiston, homes and businesses on two dozen streets were still in the dark. A slightly smaller number of outages were reported in Auburn.

At the Pleasant Street end of Acadia Avenue in Lewiston, one resident put up a sign imploring CMP to restore power. Within the hour, a CMP truck was on scene making repairs.

Across Maine, 17,500 CMP customers were still waiting for power by 9 p.m. That was down from a peak of 187,000 outages reported as Irene was still raging.

“I’m pleased we were able to restore service to so many customers today,” said Tom Depeter, CMP’s director of operations. “Our employees worked safely and efficiently through a long day, and we met our goals. We look forward to getting the last of the services restored with a good day tomorrow.”

With the arrival of additional crews from northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the company has nearly 160 tree crews and 285 repair crews clearing trees and repairing lines in every community still affected by the storm.

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