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After storm cuts power to thousands, utilities say most Mainers should get it back Monday

Nearly 18,000 Maine households were still without electricity on Monday afternoon after the weekend storm. But Central Maine Power says the vast majority of its customers should have their electricity back by the end of the day.

Adam Desrosiers is CMP's vice president of electric operations. He says restoration is slow in Oxford County, where nearly 10,000 customers were still without power as of around 2:30 pm Monday after being hit with lots of heavy, wet snow that brought down branches and trees.

But Desrosiers says CMP has nearly 1,200 lineworkers on-duty, which he hopes will mean that more than 95% of customers will have their power back soon.

"Our goal is to get as many people restored by end of day, today, as we can. And we have a good plan, and the resources in place, to do so," Desrosiers says.

Versant Power says it expects to restore power to nearly all of its customers by 4 p.m. Monday. More than 1,200 Versant customers were without power, as of around 2:30 pm.

Desrosiers says CMP brought in an additional 300 line workers from New Hampshire on Sunday night, and he's also hoping to have as many workers as possible available for next weekend's storm, when rain and sustained high winds could cause another round of outages.

Charlie Eichacker contributed reporting.