(File Photo/650 CKOM)

By CKOM News

POWER OUTAGES

Crews completing repairs after Saturday storm left 20,000 without power

Jul 4, 2023 | 11:59 AM

About 20,000 SaskPower customers lost power over the weekend after a brutal Canada Day storm swept through the province.

Scott McGregor, SaskPower spokesperson, said that count was at the height of the outage right after the storm. Steady progress by repair crews has been made in the days since July 1, he said, and as of Monday crews have reached a point where only about 2,000 customers remain without power.

About 650 of those customers are in areas where damage had occurred inside a community, he said. Another 1,400 customers were impacted by a transmission line with a damaged structure south of Nipawin.

That outage happened soon after the storm, as McGregor said it took some time for the structure to finally break.

The transmission line services several substations in Nipawin, Tobin Lake and Carrot River.

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McGregor said all the damage was storm-related.

“It was definitely within the path of the powerful storm that rolled through the area,” he said.

A major challenge crews are tackling Tuesday is how isolated many affected customers are from the greater parts of the power grid.

“There’s several individual outages that all need to be addressed one at a time,” McGregor explained, adding that whenever heavily treed areas like the central or northern parts of the province are hit with high winds and lots of precipitation, trees falling on power lines becomes a common problem.

Crews are also dealing with damage to distribution primary lines, like the ones that run down streets, in addition to secondary lines, those connecting buildings to the greater power system.

“Each one of those requires its own attention,” McGregor said.

He said that’s slowing down restoration work, as crews continue to find more damage as they work on the repairs.

Another main consideration for SaskPower workers is safety.

“If it’s not safe for our crews to conduct repairs and restore safely, then we’re going to wait until it’s safe to do so,” McGregor said.

Last night, crews stopped working once it became too dark. While McGregor said it is possible for crews to work at night in some situations, hazards like lots of trees on power lines in the dark can mean operations are much safer in the daylight.

McGregor couldn’t provide a total number of poles, structures, towers or lines affected by the storm. He said that number would not be available until all customers are back online.

Joining SaskPower workers are crews from neighbouring districts — areas like Wynyard and Tisdale — to help speed up repairs.

“Everyone who has experienced an outage from this storm, they went through the storms so they know exactly why the power is out,” McGregor said.

“It can’t be overstated how much we appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding while our crews work to clean up after this storm.”