Sydney, Nova Scotia. NS Power says there are thousands of trees on power lines and hundreds of broken or leaning poles. File photo.

Representatives in charge of the various organizations involved with Fiona relief efforts in Nova Scotia once again hosted a briefing on Thursday updating the province on the ongoing work.

When the presentation began late Thursday afternoon there were still around 70,000 Nova Scotia Power customers without power. NSP Storm Lead Matt Drover said the remaining outages are primarily concentrated in Cape Breton and crews hope to have around 95 per cent of those customers reconnected over the weekend. In some rare cases, Drover indicated it may take until early next week for some customers to have their power restored.

When Drover was pressed on why Fiona had such a significant impact on the electrical grid he explained that part of it is because of the inherent difficulty in burying electrical lines around Nova Scotia due to a lack of topsoil and he also said the storm itself was unprecedented, “We are hearing people say it was the size of Juan with the strength of Dorian so we’ve really never seen something like this.

Drover was also asked if he was pleased with NSP’s preparation and response to Fiona, to which he said he couldn’t comment as the response is still ongoing.

Earlier in the day both Premier Tim Houston and EMO Minister John Lohr both called on more military resources to be dispatched to Nova Scotia to assist with relief efforts. Minister Lohr indicated that they want at least 1,000 troops in Nova Scotia.

At the briefing, it was noted that the province has submitted the formal requests for more military resources to be dispatched.

Representatives from telecommunications companies were asked if they supported mandatory uptime legislation for network providers at the briefing and both the representatives from Bell and Eastlink said the storm was unprecedented and any legislation like that would be unfair.

Thursday’s briefing is set to be the last hosted by the province, as they expect to scale down relief efforts in the coming days.

Future updates on Fiona relief efforts will be communicated by the province online through their website and official social media pages.