Erin Fletcher
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 05/04) - Thirty-four Holman residences were without power for 12 hours after a blizzard swept through the Beaufort Delta last week.

"We had a really strong blizzard here," said John Kudlak, plant superintendent for Holman NWT Power generation station.

The blizzard kicked up in the afternoon of March 27 and finally eased off by the morning of March 28 in most communities throughout the Beaufort Delta.

Schools closed, roads were blocked and scheduled flights to the communities were grounded until the winds died down and the runways could be cleared of drifts.

Holman was the only community that had a power outage. It happened when a primary connection on a power pole snapped in the wind Tuesday night and couldn't be reconnected until Wednesday morning when the winds died down, said Kudlak.

"We have emergency measures here and it turned out pretty good," said Kudlak, who was one of the customers left without power.

"We rotated power generators and some families went to other people's homes. I had a small generator and I hooked my furnace up to it and one light. We managed."

Elder Tom Thrasher said he hasn't seen this much snow in Tuktoyaktuk for years.

The whole community has four-foot snowbanks after the roads were cleared of the drifts. He said the roads are like tunnels the banks are so high.

"I saw my boat the one day and now I can't because it's under snow," said Thrasher.

"We got drifts and drifts (of snow). I never seen it this bad in a long time."

He said people spent the last few days digging their snowmobiles out of their driveways.

Like Holman, the storm started on Tuesday and was finished by Wednesday.

Thrasher said he hopes the excess snow doesn't affect the caribou migration. He said the caribou might have problems digging down to find food.

"It's a long way to the calving grounds," he said.

In Inuvik, Mackenzie Road was a mire of churned up snow and ruts, making for a hard drive into work for most people.

That is, if they could dig their vehicle out of the driveway.

And calling a cab wasn't much help.

United Cabs had two cars on Tuesday morning. And only one of those was a 4x4, said dispatcher Hussien Mustafa.

"We had a few other cabs out there but they kept getting stuck," he said.

"They'd get stuck again and again."

At one point he had more than 80 calls backed up.

Flights on the other hand kept coming in from Edmonton and Yellowknife.

Although the First Air flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems, the Canadian North flight arrived and left according to schedule, said Karen King, Mike Zubko Airport manager.