THUNDER BAY – With more than 10,000 customers affected at some time by power outages on Tuesday, it was a busy day for Thunder Bay Hydro crews.
Windy conditions and wet sticky snow made for difficult work and more than once forced workers to backtrack into the same area to repair new damage and restore electricity service to a neighbourhood for the second time.
Spokeswoman Eileen Dias said crews are hard at work attempting to rectify the situation, but she expected it will be some time before everyone is connected again.
“Thunder Bay Hydro has been tackling this storm since probably starting about 4 o’clock in the morning. We have also had crews on that have been there all day and more crews that will be staying on all night,” Dias said.
“We have been frustrated by a lot of the weather conditions that have made it difficult for our crews to be working in, particularly the gusts of wind that have made it treacherous out there for them.”
In addition to the weather, Dias said some of the issues faced on Tuesday were man-made.
“We’ve also had some incidents where some traffic has created problems because of sliding and ice underneath and we’ve had a little bit of power down because of tree limbs on the line,” Dias said.
“We’re assuming that the rural areas that are currently affected have got more than one trouble area on very long lines and that’s why we expect that even if we can find areas to fix that it may be a little bit longer of a resolution.”
While the outages have taken place in all four corners of the city, Dias said there were major ones in both the East End and in the Intercity area, which led to several schools and the Intercity Shopping Centre closing for the day. It also shuttered the usually busy Canada Games Complex.
“A lot of things by the lake have been severely affected,” she said. “We’ve had some smaller areas that seem to have long-term outage problems that we’re just going to have to go back to.”
Dias said they're hoping the majority of the urban outages will be solved by 6 p.m.
But not everyone will be so lucky.
“There will be areas that will be out longer than that. However, it’s our expectation that we’ll be moving into the rural areas and then we’re going to be looking at a hopeful estimated time of restoration by 8 p.m.,” Dias said.
“We really understand there are some people who have been without power for a long day. It’s not warm out there. The wind is starting to cause a chill factor in some people’s homes and we’re very concerned about that and we’re very frustrated by our inability to resolve power outages and keep the power on.”
Up to date information can be found at www.tbhydro.on.ca.
