‘Patchy’ power outages hit Regina

Many people in Regina got ready for work in the dark Wednesday morning, as patchy power outages put out the lights in the north, south and central areas of the city.

By 7 a.m., SaskPower reported that the neighbourhoods of Assiniboia East, the General Hospital, Borders Annex and Centre Square were without power, according to the utility provider’s Twitter page.

“We know that it’s widespread,” SaskPower’s Joel Cherry said early in the morning. “The power’s out in southeast Regina and it’s out in northwest Regina, so it’s all over the city. It’s widespread and patchy.”

SaskPower said power outages were patchy and widespread across Regina, affecting areas in the north, south and central areas of the city on March 27, 2019. (SaskPower outage map)

People on the 980 CJME text line also reported outages in Grand Coulee and Pense, and in Regina’s Parliament Place, Regent Park, Harbour Landing, Westhill and Westerra areas.

People on Twitter also said Westerra and Uplands dealt with an outage.

SaskPower began restoring power to affected areas by 11 a.m. There were some temporary outages in the city in the afternoon as a result of repairs that were underway.

Cherry said the cause of the initial outages was the morning mist and humidity lingering in the city.

“The dirt that builds up on the electrical system throughout the winter can combine (with the humidity) to cause some issues for us,” Cherry said.

That sparked five pole fires, which damaged power lines inside and outside the city, he said. There were four damaged transmission lines outside Regina, and at least two distribution lines inside the city.

Transmission lines are larger in terms of size and electrical capacity, Cherry explained.

“Most of the outage issues we had in the city this morning were because of transmission outages,” he said.

Cherry confirmed that Pense, Grand Coulee and rural areas immediately north and east of Regina were also without power. Late in the afternoon, he revealed that about 40,000 customers had been affected during the day.

In Regina, all schools but one stayed open.

The public school board said 18 of its 57 schools were hit by the outage, but none of them had to shut down or cancel classes.

The Catholic school division said that half of its 32 schools were without power Wednesday morning; all except O’Neill High School stayed open and continued with classes.

The division’s communications person, Twylla West, said O’Neill had to send students home, because too few of its classrooms have windows where natural light would have been used to continue teaching.