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Residents of Embree had their power restored on Wednesday, 42 hours after it went out.
But a firefighter in the town says an outage that long makes her fearful for what could have happened had there been an emergency.
Thousands of Newfoundland Power and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro customers lost their power on Tuesday as hurricane-force gusts blew through the island during a snowstorm.
Wells lost her power in Embree at 9 p.m. NT on Monday. It was restored around 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
She said a power outage that long is concerning, and, as a volunteer firefighter, it can present challenges.
Pagers that the firefighters use operate on phone lines, she said. If those lines went down in a storm, residents would be very limited in how they can connect with emergency services.
“If anybody ended up with a fire, they’d have no way to reach us,” said Michelle Wells.
Residents from communities around the island voiced similar concerns on Tuesday, and Wells said poor cell reception is a problem across rural parts of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Twillingate Mayor Deborah Bourden told CBC News communication only gets harder when the power goes out as people rely on texting and data for updates.
“When all of the internet goes down, and then everybody moves to their cell to communicate, the bandwidth is not able to keep up with that,” Bourden said. “It becomes really challenging for us.
Wells believes more needs to be done to improve the cellular network.
“A lot of places in Newfoundland now don’t even have cell service. And it’s getting worse every day instead of better every day. So if I got power gone, therefore I can’t use my wi-fi calling. So that’s pretty concerning, too,” she said.
“If we’re here and our power’s gone in an emergency, like, just hope and pray that our phones is going to reach 911 or a neighbour.”
Poor cell service in times of emergency has been highlighted by community leaders across Newfoundland and Labrador in recent years — most recently during a fatal plane crash near Deer Lake in July.
Outside of the fire service, Wells said she was fearful other emergencies could have come up during the outage.
“I was very concerned about my water freezing, my things thawing out in the deep freeze,” she said. “Not much sleep [Tuesday] night thinking about what I might have to face when I got back today.”
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