BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO - Parts of Behchoko were without electricity for more than four hours on Friday.

The community was hit by a power outage that also affected Yellowknife and surrounding area.

The power went out at around 11:12 a.m. It was fully restored in Behchoko at 4:40 p.m.

It appears the community came through the power outage in relatively good shape, despite the cold.

Leon Lafferty, a community resident and former MLA, said the temperature was -37 C when the power went out.

"I haven't heard too many problems," he said. "I know some people got a little bit cold, but it came back in time that nobody got any freezing or anything."

Lafferty said the power at his home was out for about two-and-a-half hours.

The problem began with either a malfunctioning generator or a power generating problem at the Northwest Territories Power Corporation's Bluefish facility on the Yellowknife River, about 30 km north of the city.

The problem cascaded from there. When the company tried to start up diesel generators at the Jackfish Lake power plant, a fuse blew on a main generator. Then the company lost power production at its hydro facility on the Snare River.

Mike Bradshaw, a spokesperson for the power corporation, said initially everyone in Behchoko, like everybody in Yellowknife, was affected by the outage.

"An additional issue in Behchoko was distribution related," he said, explaining it involved a switch on the system.

"When the problem happened with the supply in Behchoko, for whatever reason that switch opened itself back up. It didn't stay closed. And then it didn't respond to the automatic recloser from our system control centre," he said. "It was a faulty switch on the distribution line, so we had to dispatch a crew to manually reclose that and we'll have to replace it."

Lafferty said Friday's outage was relatively minor compared to some in the past, including 10 days of rotating blackouts about 30 years ago.

"This is not a long one," he said.

However, he said some people in the community had started getting ready to move to other people's houses because of the cold.

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