SHAPLEIGH — At 9 a.m. today, 98 percent of Central Maine Power customers in Newfield didn’t have electricity and 94 percent of customers in Shapleigh didn’t either, a CMP spokesman said this morning.

John Carroll said the company’s goal is to have everyone back on the grid by Thursday night.

Tropical Storm Irene tore through Maine Sunday, knocking tree limbs onto power lines across the state. At 9 p.m. Sunday, about 187,000 CMP customers had lost power, and the company estimates that as many as 280,000 lost service at some point during the storm.

Power crews left more centralized areas of Maine, like Penobscot County, Tuesday night and headed south, Carroll said this morning.

Carroll said it is the company’s goal to have trucks on every single circuit today.

At 9 a.m., there were 44,820 customers in the Central Maine Power service area without electricity. Of those, 10,764 were in York County.

Newfield’s percentage was the highest at 98 percent, which means 1,028 customers were without electricity. In Shapleigh, there were 2,000 customers out, 1,800 in Acton, 1,650 in Waterboro, and 940 in Parsonsfield, among others, Carroll reported.

Shapleigh Selectwoman Ruth Ham was among those whose power was restored Tuesday afternoon.

Soon after Sunday’s storm, she said she took a drive through the community to survey the damage.

“There were trees down all around town,” she said.

Carroll said downed trees are a problem.

“Roads in many places are still impassible,” he said.

In Waterboro Tuesday, fire department personnel were helping the public works department staff remove tree limbs from streets and roadways. Road Commissioner Douglas Foglio told selectmen Tuesday night that as of that evening every road in town was open.

Carroll said today CMP would have  distribution points set up in communities so crews that were running low on supplies wouldn’t have to return to the local service centers to get more.

Carroll said Tuesday night’s goal had been to get the total number of outages down below 50,000 ”“ and that goal was reached.

“We’ll make a lot of progress today,” he predicted.

Ham was off to visit the town hall this morning, to get an update on how matters stood in her community. There was no electricity at town hall Tuesday night so there was no regular selectmen’s meeting.

She said after the storm, people seemed in pretty good spirits even though they were coping without electricity, which also means no running water for those who rely on wells.

“It gets old after a while though,” she said. “People get tired of taking a bath in a tea cup.”

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com.