Murray Wood: Who's hot and who's not
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Nearly 4,000 people in southwest Saskatchewan went to sleep with no power on Friday night, and woke up to find the problem not resolved on Saturday.
The outage stretched from the Kindersley area south to Maple Creek and east to just past Swift Current and due to wildfire smoke, SaskPower crews aren’t able to use a helicopter to locate the issue from the air.
“We have to patrol the line to try to find the issue,” said SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry on Saturday morning. “Our crews are out there looking, (but) because of the weather, it’s difficult to get out there and survey from the air so we’re having to patrol the line by vehicle.”
The area without power from Friday night to Saturday afternoon. (SaskPower screengrab)
Power was finally restored early afternoon on Saturday,
Cherry said the problem began late Friday night around 11 p.m., and he thought that storm activity took down a transmission line.
A transmission line has a high voltage of power compared to a distribution line, and carries power from generating facilities over long distances.
“If you go driving in the country and you see the large structures that usually have two poles, those would be transmission lines,” said Cherry.
“When a transmission line goes out it can affect several substations, which is the case here.”
Cherry said transmission line outages aren’t uncommon and usually happen when there is extreme weather.
Leader pharmacy saved by backup generator
The Dirk Family Pharmacy in Leader was able to weather the outage thanks to a back up generator.
Both the liquor store and Subway in the town also have a backup generator, allowing for all three businesses to stay open.
“That was one of the main reasons for (having) the backup generator,” said Darilin Rotar of Dirk Family Pharmacy. “It’s for the … fridge items, otherwise there could be a possible loss of thousands of dollars.”
Rotar said Leader was “like a ghost town” during the outage., with very few people out the streets.
“It’s gray, it’s cloudy, it’s smoky, muggy and hot,” she said before power was restored.
This isn’t the first time people in Leader have had to deal with a lengthy power outage.
“Back in 2017 when we had a … grass fire around these areas (and power) was out for two or three days,” she said.
— with files from CKOM News
