Pond Inlet (Aug 18/03) - Strong winds knocked the power out for the day Wednesday in Pond Inlet.

"People started calling us right after the outage," said Kain Killiktee at the Nunavut Power Corporation. "They saw some sparks around the town."

Three transformers feed the town, "and one just died," Killiktee said.

About 450 homes were affected.

Calls to Nunavut Power came in fast and furious throughout the day, Killiktee said.

"The fist thing they say is, 'It's getting cold in the house!'" Killiktee said.

But most of the services in the town were still working, and there were no power-related emergencies, according to the RCMP.

"It's just cold. We haven't got our heater hooked up properly yet," said Cst. Ben Hitchcock at the Pond Inlet RCMP detachment.

"Things are running normally," he said.

The co-op and the Northern Store closed for the day.

The health centres used generators.

The RCMP dealt with "just general calls for the day," said Hitchcock.

"Nothing significantly different."

Power maintenance crews from Iqaluit arrived in Pond Inlet at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday to repair the damaged transformer.

According to the NPC the last power outage in Pond Inlet was 3 months ago.