Going into the sixth day without power, frustration is starting to settle in, but for the most part people are taking it in stride.
In Cramahe Township, Tim Hortons, Ultramar and the Big Apple have been without power since Saturday, March 29, 2025. The traffic lights Purdy Road and County Road 25 haven’t been working since the weekend. But thankfully motorists are doing their best and there have been no collisions.
It’s unknown how many people are without power in Northumberland County.
Hydro crews are doing their best to restore power with crews helping out from outside Ontario.
Hydro One said they haven’t seen anything like this since the storm of 1998.
In Campbellford a convoy of hydro trucks headed through town on Wednesday (April 2, 2025) afternoon.
Trent Hills Mayor Bob Crate said power was restored to “most” of Hastings on Tuesday, Warkworth got “some back” on Monday and Cambellford has been “on and off.”
“But we’ve been lucky. Kudos to our staff, especially our fire department and our rec staff who are putting in all the extra hours making sure that we had the warming centres open so people could get out of the cold and charge up their phones.”
There are a lot of trees and tree limbs that have fallen which will take a considerable amount of time to get cleared said Crate.
“But all in all, we’ve been very, very fortunate.”
Crate said when there is an emergency, neighbours always help out their neighbours.
“I see that all the time. We have people saying on Facebook, “I have a chainsaw, if I can help give me a message and I’ll help clean up.”
“It’s a community thing and we’re proud of it. We’re proud of the people that look after each other and check on their neighbours.”
In Trent Hills, businesses were closed for at least two days.
“With grocery stores, if they don’t have hydro they could lose so much in a very short period of time.”
With stores now open in Hastings, Crate was heading to a restaurant for a nice hot meal and to shot support for town businesses.
During the first few days even people had a hard time filling their gas tanks.
“I spoke to one person this morning and he drove to Belleville on Sunday to get gas because there just wasn’t anything around here. It’s tough on the businesses and hopefully people will get out and support them as much as they can.”
While power is being restored by hydro crews, Crate said they are looking into ways to remove the debris from the shoulder of the roads.
“Once we get the main things done, then staff will take crews and go around and pick up the stuff that’s there. We’ll be looking at ways to help people out as we go.”
Crate said there was discussions about calling a State of Emergency, but that only applies when you’ve lost infrastructure.
“We discussed it everytime we had a meeting, but we felt that we were able to handle what was going on.”
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
