Utilities still working to restore electricity in Michigan, Maine

Utilities in several states and Canada on Friday continued to work on repairs, hoping to bring tens of thousands of customers back on line after an ice storm last weekend shut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.

Michigan and Maine, the states hit the hardest, reported progress but utilities acknowledged that some outages, caused by power lines downed by crusted ice, continued.

In Michigan where nearly 600,000 homes and businesses lost power, about 64,000 customers remained in the dark, according to the Associated Press. Nearly 62,000 customers in eastern Canada were without electricity, including 33,000 in Toronto, the wire service said.

In Maine, officials were hoping to complete repairs so that everyone would have electricity, according to Central Maine Power Co.

As of 11 a.m., 6,451 customers were still without power, according to the utility’s website.

“We met our goal to reduce outages to fewer than 10,000 without service Thursday evening, and as of this morning, have restored service to more than 117,000 customers since Monday morning,” said CMP spokesman John Carroll. “We continue to re-deploy crews to areas that still have outages in a push to finish up by this evening.”

The storm, which hit parts of the Midwest over the weekend and moved east, has been blamed for 27 deaths in the United States and Canada.