CALGARY- Downtown Calgary remains mostly deserted as crews continue to work to restore power following Saturday night’s underground explosion and fire.
Thousands will remain without electricity in the downtown core on Tuesday.
City officials are telling Calgarians “not” to drive in the area from 11th street southwest to 4th street southwest and from 4th avenue southwest to 7th avenue southwest.
They’re also warning citizens to be prepared for extremely slow traffic coming in and out of downtown “outside” that area as well.
Over 100 buildings are impacted, 2,100 businesses and more than five-thousand residents.
It’s déjà vue all over again for some residents, bringing back memories of the June flood last year and the snow storm last month. It all starts with no power.
It’s a 12 story climb for the Potdar family and a breakfast of cold cereal and juice.
“No hot water, no TV, no computer, no internet, so it’s pretty bad, yeah pretty bad,” Patribha Potdar said.
“I had to go up the stairs twice, no elevator and no elevator,” Nihal Potdar said.
A loud pop was one of several underground explosions in an electrical vault about nine o’clock Saturday night.
A subsequent fire destroyed sub surface electrical infrastructure including fibre optic cables and power was knocked out to residents and businesses in the west downtown core, spoiling their thanksgiving long weekend.
Enmax says there are working hard to restore power.
“We are currently estimating we will have power restored in this area sometime between Wednesday evening and Saturday evening,” Gianna Manes, Ceo of Enmax said.
Repair crews are working round the clock but power will only be restored gradually and not for awhile.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi says they have to rebuild the electrical system in the area, which is why it’s taking so much time to restore power.
“This is going to take time we are not talking about a repair we are talking about a rebuild of a large amount of infrastructure,” Mayor Nenshi said.
There were also several evacuations made by the Calgary Fire Department.
“We’ve also had a couple of evacuations that we’ve had to do. One was due to a gas leak that was discovered after the ventilation systems were shutdown. In the building at Rimbey house and then at 608 9th street SW. Residents of that building were evacuated due to high levels of CO,” Ken Uzeloc from Emergency Management Agency said.
The city says 911 service has also been knocked out, turning downtown highrise towers into dark empty buildings, as Calgarians cope with yet another emergency as best they can.
The traffic barriers have been reduced by a few blocks but only emergency vehicles are being allowed inside the impacted area. Most parkades are also shut down/
The c-train is running normally.
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