Hundreds of thousands of people were facing power outages on Tuesday that could take days to restore after a sweeping costal storm battered the Northeast with whipping winds and soaking downpours.
Nearly 600,000 customers across New England were without power early Tuesday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks the utility industry.
Most of the outages were in Maine, where more than 430,000 customers were affected as of 7:30 a.m. In Massachusetts, mostly along the eastern part of the state, more than 130,000 customers were experiencing a power failure, with about 28,000 more in Connecticut.
National Grid in Massachusetts said in a statement on social media on Monday that it had about 2,000 workers responding to storm damage by clearing trees and repairing electrical infrastructure. While some customers complained about potentially waiting days for their electricity to be restored, the company said it was normal for estimated restoration times to fluctuate depending on work volume, the cause of the damage and other factors.
Central Maine Power said on Facebook on Monday that it also anticipated a multiday restoration effort involving hundreds of line and tree crews. The company said that high winds in the area were preventing some crews from using bucket trucks for repairs.
By Tuesday morning, it was clear that the power outages would continue to disrupt routines for communities across Maine. Dozens of school districts across the state were either closed or were operating on a delayed schedule. Some hospitals continued to face complications on Tuesday, including Northern Light Health, a network of 10 hospitals and more than 100 health care facilities across the state.
A spokesman for the company told WABI 5, a local news outlet, that power outages can cause some patients who rely on electricity for in-home care to flock to hospitals, keeping personnel from attending to those who require emergency care.
The storm also caused damage in Canada, where by early Tuesday nearly 175,000 homes in four provinces were also without power.
The coastal storm, which walloped South Carolina and North Carolina over the weekend, became deadly as it moved north along the East Coast on Monday with damaging winds and flooding.
An 89-year-old man in Massachusetts was killed when the wind knocked down a large tree. In Maine, a 40-year-old man was killed by a falling tree while trying to clear his roof.
At one point, the storm had knocked out power to more than 750,000 customers across New England, New York and New Jersey.
Weather conditions were also so poor that residents in Moretown, Vt., with a population of 1,675, were told to evacuate their homes because of river flooding, according to the local authorities.
Farther south, the storm snarled traffic and disrupted mass transit in and around New York City on Monday. Multiple commuter rail lines operated with extensive delays, as did buses across the five boroughs.
The Verrazzano Bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn, was also temporarily closed early Monday. When it reopened hours later, tractor-trailers, minibuses, step vans, motorcycles and similar vehicles were banned from using it because of high winds.