.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

CORAL HARBOUR - Residents of Coral Harbour worked together to conserve power for two days this past week while power plant employees searched to locate the reason for temporary power interruptions in the community.

The problem was discovered to be a wire connection that had come loose in a junction box, causing it to be tripped off by vibrations.

Senior administrative officer Rob Hedley said the problems started on Feb. 19 when the community started experiencing temporary power interruptions.

"In my initial conversations with the power station, it was determined we had to start shutting things down to conserve power until the source of the problem could be found," said Hedley.

"We immediately shut down the arena, and the Northern and Co-op were great in cutting back on their power consumption to help out.

"Sakku school and our airport went on generators and, as soon as the hamlet went into conservation mode, there were no more interruptions."

Hedley said power loss is always scary in the Kivalliq during the winter.

But, he said, everyone in the community did their part to conserve energy and the incident turned out to be more of an inconvenience than anything else.

"A power spokesperson was on radio by Wednesday (Jan. 21) to notify the community the problem was solved and the generators were back to full capacity.

"Everyone was glad to hear the announcement and get back to their daily lives.

"There was a sigh of relief that it was fixed relatively quickly because prolonged power outages are a big deal this time of year.

"We haven't been getting the storms the rest of the region has, but it's been pretty cold here."

Sakku principal Francis Fitzgerald said the school was closed for two days due to the shortage.

He said everyone in the community was asked to save as much power as possible and the school did its part.

"We won't lose any ground due to the closure because - and this might be a surprise to some - we don't lose much time here due to bad weather," said Fitzgerald.

"This was our first loss of school time this year and, in fact, we're probably the only school in the region that doesn't lose significant time in the school year due to weather.

"Last year we were out for a total of two days.

"We read about all the blizzard problems across the region last year, but for us, it was business as usual."