John King
Northern News Services

Rae-Edzo (Jan 23/06) - Weather was on the side of residents in Rae-Edzo after a partially collapsed power line left many homes in the dark two weekends ago.

"All I could think about was years ago when the power went out for seven days," said Cecile Desjardins, who helped manage emergency efforts during the initial power outage.

YK power out... again Yellowknife was once more without power, this time on Friday afternoon. The outage was city-wide, with services being shut down at 4:02 p.m., and returning at 4:55 p.m. Al Mueller with Northland Utilities said the shutdown was a result of equipment failure of a hydro-unit at its Snare Falls location. "We don't know the exact reason behind the outage," said Mueller early Friday evening. Mueller said that the station at Blue Fish was still running, and its diesel units are also active. Meanwhile, 200 Latham Island residents saw the lights fail earlier that Friday. Northland Utilities representatives said a protective mechanism near Pilot's Monument broke due to a higher demand for power because of cold weather. The mechanism was replaced. The outage lasted only hours.

"But we didn't have the cold weather like we did then. It probably would have been worse if we had regular seasonal temperatures," Desjardins said.

Temperatures hovered around -23C on Jan. 14, the day the power went out, said Desjardins. Temperatures are normally -30C and lower in January.

When the power did go out at around noon, most people thought it would be back on right away, said Patricia Rabesca, manager of the Tli Cho Motel in Rae.

"This has never happened before in my lifetime," Rabesca said.

"It came to a point where people were anxious to know what was going on. It was cold for the seniors and babies, and many were really worried."

Rabesca said many people made their way to the homes of family members or friends with wood stoves.

"There was a point where if the power didn't go on, emergency crews were going to medevac seniors to Edzo, where the power came on sooner than Rae," Rabesca said.

Power was finally restored around 3:30 p.m. in Edzo, but not until 10:30 at night in Rae.

Tom Gogal, the senior administrative officer for the Hamlet of Rae, said people and emergency crews responded really well to the power outage.

"People made it through this really well," Gogal said. "There were lots of vehicles on the street Saturday night," Gogal added, saying that people kept warm by staying in their vehicles. "Everybody joined in together and helped each other out."

Gogal also credits Desjardins for doing a really great job in co-ordinating emergency relief efforts.

"We had two volunteers at the fire hall in case there were any fires from candles," Desjardins said.

"Ambulance crews had a list of seniors and handicaps, and went door to door to check on these people.

"The RCMP helped set up a command post first at their office, then later at the Khon Go Cho Sportsplex, where beds were starting to be set up," Desjardins said.

The power came back on before it became necessary to use them, said Desjardins.

After the initial power failure, the NWT Power Corp. brought in a small supplemental diesel generator, said Randy Patrick, a Power Corp. spokesperson.

"Right now, we've brought in a larger diesel-powered generator that arrived just last night," Patrick said.

"A transformer will arrive later today (Jan. 19) and we should have it up and running sometime tonight."

The generator, which was shipped in from Edmonton, was installed last Thursday at the Frank Channel diesel station.

After a 90-minute planned outage, power was restored.

When asked how much it's costing the company to run the diesel generators, Patrick says it's hard to calculate on a day-to-day basis of diesel-generated electricity when compared to hydro-generated electricity.

But he said diesel definitely costs more than hydro.

"Hydro electricity is both more cost-effective and environmentally friendly," Patrick said.

The power outage is the result of a tower partially collapsing along the transmission line route from the Snare hydro dam to Rae-Edzo.

"About 45km out of Yellowknife, there is a separate line that goes to Rae-Edzo," Patrick said.

"Three towers were down. We had a tower partially collapsed and that caused the initial outage, and the inability to get hydro power to Rae-Edzo," said Patrick.

Because the smaller supplemental power generator used after the initial power failure was too small to power both communities completely, there were intermittent failures of no longer than a half-hour at the most throughout the week.

With the larger diesel generator now in place, the power supply should become stable once again, said Patrick. "We're in the North and we're not on a power grid. When you have a single line, you must have a back-up in place," Patrick said about the back-up diesel generators.

"We're doing our very best... it took some time to find the problem," Patrick added.

Patrick estimates it will take crews about two weeks to fix the downed power line.

- with files from

Dorothy Westerman