Some observations:
1. Yep. It’s a crisis.
When you have a major utility cutting electricity to people in a blizzard at random, for random periods of time because it cannot supply enough electricity to meet demand, you have a crisis.
That’s what it feels like to the people in it. That’s what it is.
People never knew when their lights would be on or off, nor would they know for how long. The Newfoundland Power and the NL Hydro operations people who briefed the public were straightforward and factual. They did their jobs well.
The thing is that the public emergency system, including the politicians, didn’t clue in that randomly shutting off power to thousands of voters at a time over the course of several days might be a bit of a problem for the voters.