Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 10, 2007

GJOA HAVEN - A third of Gjoa Haven was without power for 29 hours last week.

Power was restored at 4:50 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, but by that time some residents had already left their homes to seek warmth elsewhere in town.

In all, 40 housing units were without power in the community of 1,064 people, according to Meghan McRae, a spokesperson with Qulliq Energy Corporation.

The cause of the outage was a broken phase wire on one of the power feeders that supply the town, she said.

Members of the power corp.'s line crew from Cambridge Bay were unable to land in the community due to blizzard conditions. They were expected to travel to Gjoa Haven this past Sunday after making repairs to a feeder in Cambridge Bay.

"It was the operator and assistant operator who made the repairs. They're temporary repairs, but they should hold until the line crew get in," McRae said.

Quick thinking and a dedicated team of workers ensured that community members were safe and no damage was done to housing units, she said.

In a bid to ensure housing units didn't freeze, maintenance workers rotated generators around the town, and connected houses without power to those that did with extension cords.

"The community members were kind enough to lend the generators they had," housing manager Helen Tungilik said, as the hamlet didn't have enough. "We had so many extension cords that we ended up asking the people to come in to the housing shop to pick up the extension cords they had lent, there were so many."

The only building that sustained damage was the arena, said recreation co-ordinator Paul Puqiqnak. Pipes burst in the kitchen area and in the office, but activities weren't interrupted.

"We were really lucky this time," Tungilik said.

An emergency meeting was held early Wednesday afternoon with the RCMP, search and rescue, Canadian Rangers, fire department, housing, schools, and health centre representatives in attendance.

"We all got together ... to be prepared if the power was not restored. We were getting to the point where we want to tell the people to move," director for works for the hamlet, Louie Kamookk said.

Some in the community bunked with relatives who still had power while others chose to wait it out in their homes.

"Some people were trying to keep their house warm with Primus stoves and Coleman lamps which is pretty dangerous," Kamookk said.

He said it was a lucky thing the whole community wasn't without power. If that were the case, the hamlet would have advised people to go to the schools, which have back-up power.

Residents were also lucky that the temperature only dipped to -14 C during the storm.

Power outages in winter are nothing new to the community.

"This year we've had lots of problems in Gjoa Haven," Kamookk said. "Every time there's a storm we seem to have lines breaking and fuses breaking."