ULUKHAKTOK/HOLMAN - The Canadian Rangers were called into action in Ulukhaktok last week as some residents lost electricity for more than 24 hours.

Power shut down in 20 homes and the airport in the hamlet of about 400 around 9 a.m. Oct. 5 after a small piece of power plant cable stopped working and cut off service to one distribution feeder in town. A repair crew tried to fly in from Inuvik Tuesday afternoon but the flight was grounded because of heavy snow in Ulukhaktok. The crew eventually arrived on Oct. 6 and fully restored power at 12:30 p.m., 27 hours after the outage began.

NWT Power Corporation spokesperson Mike Bradshaw said the crew has yet to submit a full report on the cause of the outage, but he suspects the equipment stopped functioning simply because it was worn out.

"Everything's working fine now. We contacted the community and the airport there and let them know, kept them apprised," Bradshaw said. "We know the community members helped each other out through the evening."

Housing Corporation officials made sure nobody went without heat by hooking up generators and connecting other heat sources to homes without power.

Acting SAO Joseph Perry said the hamlet followed power outage protocol by first hooking up generators, working with airport staff to monitor those generators, and setting up a community shelter.

"The key issue that we always battle is we want to make sure we maintain heat in the buildings, because as you can appreciate, sub-zero temperatures and freeze-ups are disastrous to us," he said.

The hamlet doesn't have an official written emergency plan, but Perry said residents band together in times of crisis.

"It's up to administration and management to ensure that the action plans are followed and put in place, but it's second nature to us. You know, we lose our power from time to time and everybody just knows what to do," Perry said. "We're a remote community of subsistence hunters and fishers, so most households have camping gear. We all know that as long as we can get our heat on so the houses don't freeze up, we know we can get a bite to eat and we won't go hungry."

As soon as the hamlet's recreation co-ordinator, Joanne Ogina, heard about the outage, she rounded up all available local Junior Canadian Rangers and about 15 to 20 volunteers. They went to the Community Corporation, the Co-op and Northern stores and the school collecting food donations.

The community centre, school, businesses and most other residences were not affected by the outage, so volunteers joined forces in the Katimavik centre to cook and distribute food to those without electricity.

"We cooked a bunch of meals," Ogina said. "We made soup, stir-fry, bannock and the next day we also had soup and a hot dog lunch."

Laverna Klengenberg was one of the residents whose power went out, but her family kept their home heated by connecting an extension cord to their neighbour's home which still had power.

She said residents were happy to help each other out, most without power going to visit family who still had electricity.

"People pull together and do what needs to get done."

Still, Klengenberg said last week's outage was nothing compared to power outages the community used to endure 40 years ago.

"I remember when I was a kid the power used to go out overnight and it was really stormy and bad blizzards, but people manage."

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