Yellowknife (Feb 12/03) - Monday's power outage affected everybody in Yellowknife, Dettah, Ndilo and Rae-Edzo.

Norm McBride, operations manager for the Northwest Territories, said it was the second outage this winter. The first happened on Jan. 4.

"It's been happening once or twice a season," he said. "All indications suggest that it's frost on the line."

The outage lasted an hour and the Northwest Territories Power Corporation suspects it was caused by an overcurrent fault somewhere on the 145 kilometre line between Yellowknife and the Snare hydro site. Allen Mueller, manager of customer service for Northland Utilities, said that type of fault is caused when two lines slap together and short circuit.

"We suspect it was maybe wind," he said. "Ice can also cause this. Every so often it comes up and bites us in the you-know-what."

NWT Power Corporation is patrolling the line by helicopter and McBride said they believe they've located the problem 65 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

Restoration of power to Dettah was delayed by another hour because the power corporation had to check the Bluefish transmission line's integrity before sending power through it.