Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 18/00) - Residents of Dettah were in the dark for almost four hours Monday night.

A power outage occurred at approximately 11:30 p.m. as a result of a line failure between the Ingraham Trail and Dettah. The failure then caused a pole fire at NWT Power's Dettah substation where some equipment was damaged.

"It was just a small fire, nothing dramatic," said Bob Chapman, NWT Power's acting regional director.

The Yellowknife Fire Department responded to the scene, and the fire was promptly extinguished.

The fire did result in some structural damage to the Dettah substation. Chapman estimates repairs will cost approximately $20,000.

"But we're reviewing exactly what we want to do with this substation," he added.

"It's a very old building structure and whether we're going to replace it ... we're kicking that around."

Although the community went without power for almost four hours, Chapman said the restoration was fairly swift for the less than favourable working conditions.

"(Crews) were working in driving rain and in the dark and making temporary repairs to the structure," he said.

Power was completely restored by 3 a.m. Tuesday. The line is now back in service and the substation structure has been temporality repaired.

Miramar's Bluefish Hydro Plant was also affected by the blackout and the Yellowknife River Pumphouse experienced a short outage as well.