Several days of freezing rain led to heavy ice that brought down hundreds of power poles, including these on barrens near Heart's Content. (Submitted by Lester Parsons)

Crews continued Monday to try to restore power in a string of small communities in eastern Newfoundland, but authorities are not expecting the job to be finished until Tuesday.

Hundreds of utility poles were knocked down following a mix of freezing rain, sleet and high winds that swept over the eastern half of Newfoundland on Friday and Saturday.

Power installations were heavily damaged this weekend in eastern Newfoundland. (Newfoundland Power)

About 5,500 households and businesses remained without power early Monday morning. The outages closed schools and activities in numerous communities.

Gary Smith, Newfoundland Power's vice-president of customer operations and engineering, said Monday the utility was hoping to reduce that number to 2,000 by Monday night.

"Throughout the day, we're anticipating to get that number down significantly," he told CBC News.

Ice-related damage was heaviest in parts of the island's Bonavista and Avalon peninsulas, where outages affected 2,500 and 3,000 customers, respectively.

Newfoundland Power said it does not expect power to be restored until early Tuesday evening for such Bonavista Peninsula towns as Trinity and Catalina.

The utility expects to solve power outages in Conception Bay North by early Monday evening.

Hot food, warmth available

In Bonavista, the local school and a Salvation Army citadel are providing hot meals and warmth for those whose houses are too cold.

"I'm concerned about people, the shut-ins, and if somebody knows of a shut-in, I'm asking the general public to check on them, and see if they can get them to come where it's warm," Fitzgerald said.

Louise Stagg, an elderly Bonavista resident, and her husband have been spending their days at the citadel or driving around in their vehicle to beat the cold. Stagg said the trick to staying warm through the night is to go to bed earlier.

"After you go to bed, you don't find it too cold," said Stagg. "We go to bed 6:30 in the afternoon, until 8:30 the next morning."

The Bonavista council is also asking people to boil their water, if they can, because the local water treatment plant cannot operate without power.

The weather may play a role in how quickly power can be restored. Temperatures on Monday morning in eastern Newfoundland were below the freezing mark, although Smith said sunny skies may assist.

"We need some more co-operation with the sun today," he said.

In Old Perlican, where power was lost midday on Friday, Mayor Harry Strong said there have been problems with food wasting, but the town of about 700 is managing as well as it can.

"We went through this before," he told CBC News.

"Most people have alternate supplies of heat and probably even electricity with generators and whatever, and [there are] quite a few people with these propane fireplaces. So I think everybody is coping pretty well."

The town's fire department and ambulance service remain on standby, Strong said.

In Heart's Content, which lost power early Saturday morning, Mayor Don Bon Blundon said many residents are relying on generators and woodstoves.

Blundon said the storm and ice in his area alone caused serious work for power crews.

"[There were] something like 50 or 60 poles down on Heart's Content barrens alone, besides the ones that are down in the lower part of the bay, [and] they are saying the feed line to Heart's Content is down," Blundon said in an interview.

Newfoundland Power has been installing generators in some affected communities.

Smith said Newfoundland Power is planning rotating outages because of the limits on local generators.

Michelle Coughlan, a communications official with Newfoundland Power, said crews made progress on Sunday, and she expected that to continue through Monday.

"What we were able to do using local generation and our portable generation that we put in place yesterday afternoon, we were able to supply power to the Catalina-Port Union area overnight," she said.

"So our focus this morning on the Bonavista Peninsula now is working towards rotating that power down towards Bonavista and surrounding communities."