Manitoba Hydro says repairs are complete after a downed power line left a remote Manitoba First Nation in the dark earlier this week.
The Crown corporation said Friday that power has been restored to Pimicikamak (Cross Lake) First Nation, which had been without electricity since the line failed on Sunday, leading to a local state of emergency due to the extreme cold conditions.
Hydro said the restoration of power happened gradually in the community to avoid overloading the system.
The broken power line ran between a pair of islands in the Nelson River, and Hydro’s Peter Chura told Global Winnipeg on Thursday that the ice wasn’t thick enough for vehicles to be safely supported.
“(It) was a major undertaking,” he said. “A 300-metre stretch of cable between two islands and a river … we had to use helicopter crews outside in -30 degree weather for two full days.
“Very difficult work…. We’re very proud of our crews and the work they did, and were able to do it safely and successfully.”
Pimicikamak chief David Monias told 680 CJOB that most of the water infrastructure — from pipes to sewage tanks to the community’s main water treatment plant — was frozen or otherwise damaged due to the outage.
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“We’re not fully 100 per cent powered up in the community,” Monias said early Friday afternoon. “We have to make sure that people are going home to a safe place, to make sure they have running water for cleaning, washing and cooking.
“So we’re still waiting to see if we can get things fixed in the community.”
In a release, Hydro said there have been 20 employees working in Pimicikamak during the outage. Chura said the broken cable will be taken to Thompson and examined in an effort to determine why it failed.
Band councillor Shirley Robinson told Global Winnipeg on Thursday that the outage was a scary situation for the community of more than 7,000 residents — many of whom were evacuated to communities including Norway House, Thompson and Winnipeg.
“It was very scary at times, because we had infants at home … and our elders. There’s vulnerable and medically inclined people and others with disabilities, and we wanted to make sure we took care of everybody.”
Robinson said she was at home around 11 p.m. on Sunday when the power shut off “out of the blue.”
“I was inside of my own home when the power totally went out,” she said. “I thought it was just my unit, but then I looked out and the entire nation was just black.”
— with files from The Canadian Press
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