Islanders scrambled to keep Campobello Lodge residents warm and safe when the nursing home lost its electricity twice around Christmas and New Year's. As administrator Katherine Breton relates, the power went out for 24 hours on December 23-24 and again for 18 hours about a week later. She feared that the home's back-up generator would run out of diesel fuel before either the New Brunswick Power Corp. could restore service or Irving Oil make its regular Thursday delivery to Campobello Island.
      "Maybe I'm a little more nervous than I should be, but I don't like to take the chance with 25 residents," Breton says, adding, "We had a COVID outbreak going on at the same time, so we were handed a lot."
      Things worked out in the end because business people and others found enough fuel to keep the generator running. "Lewis Anthony helped us out, and he actually came to me and said, 'Listen, I know you need this, can we do this?' I said, 'Sure, let's do it,' and we got it all done."
      "We all know each other," says Breton, who started her new job as administrator of Campobello Lodge about four months ago. "We work together on this island," she says.
      NB Power says discussions continue on improving service to the Fundy Isles, but the utility cannot guarantee to keep a truck and crew on Campobello 24/7. "The arrangement NB Power made with Campobello is that whenever possible, we would have a crew there to respond to incoming adverse weather; however, we indicated this might not be possible in the case of a province-wide outage event, which was the case on December 23-24. The storm which hit New Brunswick was province-wide and affected more than 100,000 customers," communications officer Dominique Couture says in an email.
      Breton accepts that other areas of the province possibly needed NB Power's line crews worse than did Campobello during the storm on December 23 and 24. "Yes, we were without power here, but we were safe. We had heat. We were fully running on our generator, but I'm sure there were other areas that didn't have power or didn't have anybody with heat," she says, adding, "Most of the island did have power. It was just us and, I think, Customs, maybe [without power]."
      However, she feels that Irving Oil could have made an unscheduled trip to the island when she called after the first storm because she estimated that Campobello Lodge's generator tank had enough fuel for about 18 hours.
      "We had almost three days without power between the two of them [storms]," Breton says. "We have a generator here, but it runs on diesel, which Irving supplies and, of course, there's no gas station on the island," she explains. What about an emergency fuel run to Lubec? "We could do that if we had to, yes, I think. I'm not sure how it works with the borders," she replies.
      She says that she called Irving Oil after the first and again after the second storm. "They said they couldn't do it till the next Thursday, which is like almost a week. When I called them, it would be almost a whole week without diesel. I said we're not going to make it to that time. I didn't think we could; like, we had less than a day left and they were going to be like three days," she says.
      "We called them after the first power outage. They weren't going to be there till the next Thursday, which was the Thursday after New Year's, so when we got hit with the second power outage, I informed them that we wouldn't make it to that time," she says.
      "They're plan, or business plan, is that they don't come fill if you still have product in your tank, so at the time when I called them we still had product, but I don't believe we had enough to get to the date they were coming. They said to call back, but they still weren't going to come. They would see if they could get someone to come, but that was no guarantee, and I couldn't wait till I was totally out with 25 residents."
      "I called the after-hours line first, and they told me that they probably would deliver the next day, and then I got a call and they said 'no,' they didn't have any trucks near nor could come to the island till that delivery date," she says.
      Then the community kicked into gear. "We were able to borrow. We had a business come forward and we could borrow from them, and we've kind of made a contingency plan there, amongst ourselves," Breton says.
      "Where we're all islanders, we help each other. We're used to living here, and our thing is that we're going to make sure everybody's safe. We're going to make sure everybody, you know, has what they needed. If we have to share around, we can," she says.
      However, she feels that Irving Oil could have made an exception in this case. "This is a nursing home. They should be able to make an emergency run," she says.
      She says that Irving, based in Saint John, is the only major oil company to make regular deliveries to Campobello Island, possibly due to the complexities of crossing the border. The private ferry from Deer Island, which normally runs in the summer, is running this winter only because of the pandemic, she notes. Bad storms can keep the ferry in port.
      Irving Oil provided a brief written response to enquiries about this incident. "We work hard to offer a reliable supply of product in a safe manner to our valued customers in all the regions we serve. We provide routine deliveries to our customers on Campobello Island, and in the event of an emergency requiring heat, we strive to respond as quickly as possible," Katherine d'Entremont, in corporate communications at Irving Oil, says in an email.
      NB Power delivers electricity via an overhead cable from the mainland to Deer Island, then undersea to Campobello and on to Grand Manan.
      "We continue to work closely with the mayors of the Fundy Islands to discuss their concerns and to offer the best service possible. A formal meeting has not taken place, but we remain in communication," Couture writes in her email. She says NB Power is "revisiting" the option of arranging with the electrical utility in Maine so that a line crew from Lubec could respond to an emergency on Campobello Island.