Ice storm power outage triggers run on generators

Watch the video above: While the ice storm was costly for many of us, for some people it was a boon. Sean Mallen reports. 

When the power went out in Georgetown, Ontario on Dec. 22, John Whittaker’s mobile phone began buzzing.

“I had 40 or 50 calls from people,” Whittaker, who manages operations T&T Diesel Power Ltd., says. “They were just pleading for a generator.”

But Whittaker couldn’t help them. Instead, his outfit was busy making sure those calls would continue to connect.

T&T Diesel, a commercial generator supplier, services about 200 cell towers in and around the southwestern Ontario town which is home to 40,000 and one of the hardest hit by the ice storm which triggered an epic power outage for hundreds of thousands of homes over Christmas.

The biting temperatures of the past week have also helped knock out electrical connections to some towers, keeping a crew of five T&T technicians working overtime to make sure cell locations frozen out of the grid have their backup generators booted up.

As hours turned into days with no power for many households, calls from area residents kept coming, Whittaker says. “We just directed them to Home Depot.”

There too however, many have been turned away in recent days. Store owners and managers said Friday they were sold out of limited inventories almost immediately after the lights went out and haven’t been able to restock since.

“We only stock about two at a time. They were gone pretty quick,” Leonard McAuley, owner of Pollacks Home Hardware near High Park in Toronto’s west end where scores of households had their individual aerial connections severed by tree limbs overcome by ice.

READ MORE: Canadians hang on to hard-wired phones in case of power outage

Even now, nearly two weeks after the powerful ice storm left as many 750,000 homes across the region without electricity – some for more than a week – getting additional generators from Home Hardware’s main distribution centre in St. Jacob, Ont. about 90 minutes southwest of Toronto has proved impossible for McAuley.

“Even corporate is out of them,” he said.

The majority of customers are after smaller generators equipped with enough power to keep a furnace thermostat and motor operating, which doesn’t take much. “A lot of people are just looking to keep the furnace going and some lights on in the house,” Nutter said.

The higher watt unit costs upward of $1,800 or more, compared to the $600 price tag the smaller portable units cost. One could also consider a used model on Kijiji.

READ MORE: Why haven’t we heard of frost quakes before?

More powerful models, which can produce 10,000 watts of electricity or more, also means additional costs associated with establishing a direct connection to the circuit box rather than simply being able to plug in to the generator.

“By the time you buy the kit, pay somebody to come in to do the install, you’re going to add a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred bucks to it,” Nutter said.

The store’s most popular make, Generac, is experiencing supply issues, Nutter said, which has kept new units from getting to the Rona location. “They’re running out themselves,” the manager said.

A spokesperson for Home Depot, meanwhile, said some outlets in the province are sold out of generators, but most continue to have some in stock. “The majority of our stores have generators,” spokesperson Erika Botand said.

With new studies such as a Toronto Hydro report from September 2012 suggesting storms of greater intensity are likely to become more frequent, keeping shelves well stocked with additional generators could grow into a lucrative business for home improvement chains.

Nutter said he’s beginning to see a bit of a pattern emerge.

“With generators, I find that people wait until they absolutely need it. They don’t want to go out and spend five to fifteen hundred dollars on something they may or may not need now.”

But they will, he said.

“It’s funny because they’ll do that with salt, too. They know they’ll need salt at one point or another, but they don’t want to tie up ten bucks. Once the first ice storm comes, all of a sudden, everyone’s running in like it’s Armageddon.”