Thunderstorms leave parts of Sask. without power

A storm was brewing in Saskatchewan on Wednesday night.

Thunderstorms that passed through parts of the province left many areas without power Thursday.

SaskPower spokesperson Scott McGregor said summer storms tend to damage power poles quite frequently.

“Flooding doesn’t have that big of an effect on our grid,” said McGregor. “When it comes to storm-related damage, it’s usually from wind and trees coming down on the lines, or from lightning.”

McGregor said the Humboldt, Pierceland and Shellbrook areas were the hardest hit, but all of those outages have currently been resolved.

He said the Yorkton area continues to have some unresolved outages.

“Depending on what the nature of the damage is to any of our lines or poles, that will kind of dictate how long each individual outage will last,” said McGregor. “But typically we aim to get services restored as quickly and as safely as we can.”

McGregor said SaskPower’s goal is to get power back up and running as soon as possible. That means that with unplanned outages from storms, they will usually have to go back and implement some planned outages while fixing the damage.

“Following any sort of damage that comes from a storm, there is a chance that there will be a need for planned outages in the days and weeks following, just so we can do a more permanent fix,” said McGregor.

The power outages continue to be monitored and updated on SaskPower’s website. Residents can also report an outage on the website.

“We do certainly appreciate everybody’s patience while we get these outages restored and repaired,” said McGregor.