SaskPower said that its call centre has had over 780 outages reported across the province of Saskatchewan following a large winter storm on Wednesday night.
The outages have affected an estimated 100,000 customers, says a communications representative from SaskPower, from communities as far east as Nipawin and southwest as Maple Creek.
Many communities were without power overnight, with high winds and blowing snow making conditions unsafe for SaskPower crews to address the outages until Thursday morning.
Winds reached up to 100 kilometres in some parts of the province, say reports, and a number of problems were caused by galloping power lines, as the high winds caused powerlines to bounce and come into contact with each other, causing shortages in the system.
By noon on Jan. 14, the outage centre has received approximately 54,000 calls related to the winter storm. The online outage map was slow to be updated throughout the morning, as staff were receiving such a large volume of reports.
Around 80,000 customers in around 100 communities still remain without power at noon on Thursday, with several parts of Moose Jaw within those areas. Power had still not been restored in parts of South Hill, Rosemount and downtown at the time of publishing.
The outages also affected phone services, internet and TV services from SaskTel. A province-wide alert stated that SaskTel services may become unavailable as back-up battery power runs out, and may not be fully restored until power is also restored in the affected areas.
SaskPower is working to solve outages as quickly as possible, said the representative, but many repairs require weather conditions to improve before crews can safely conduct any work.
High winds remain a concern, and crews are working to restore power to customers as quickly and safely as possible. Priority focus on restoring power has been allocated for essential services, such as medical facilities, care homes and police and fire stations, before crews move on to repairs for residential customers. SaskPower said it is also working with provincial and municipal agencies on storm response.
SaskPower reminds residents that if they see a downed or damaged powerline, to stay at least 10 metres back and call the Outage Centre immediately at 1 (306) 310-2220 or, if the situation is an emergency, call 911.
Regular updates on the status of outages in the province can be found on SaskPower’s Twitter page or online at saskpower.ca/outages.
