Courtesy of saskpower.com
A vehicle knocking down a power pole south of La Ronge is blamed for last Friday’s power outage that impacted a number of northern communities.
It happened shortly after midnight on January 13th near the turn off to Besnard Lake. SaskpPower spokesperson, Laura McKnight, says it was not a simple fix.
“Our crews will try to work as quickly and safely as possible,” she said. “In this case, it was a pole that was down, so crews had to replace that pole.”
Mcknight says SaskPower was notified of the outage at about 12:30 in the morning, but it took crews about an hour to isolate the problem, then an additional four hours to get the pole up and have the power restored to everyone.
She says a new power grid that was completed last year from Island Falls to Key Lake was not an option because the La Ronge area is on a different power grid.
She adds, the corporation is continuing its 10-year — 10 billion dollar infrastructure plan to make the system more dependable and less prone to outages.
Even though power was out for only a few hours, it caused a five-day boil water advisory in La Ronge. That is because a backup system that is designed to prevent the water system from depressurizing during an outage is not yet fully in place.
Upgrades to the water system were started last summer.