INUVIK - Hurricane force winds knocked out phone and Internet service, grounded planes and obstructed roads last weekend, leaving people in Inuvik cut off from the outside world.

Davey Elwood braves heavy winds on Saturday, Feb. 26, to pick up some supplies for dinner. A winter storm closed the Dempster Highway and damaged a NorthwesTel microwave relay tower, cutting off the Beaufort Delta from the rest of the world. - Kira Curtis/NNSL photos

Sunny Patch, spokesperson for NorthwesTel, said the communication problem was caused by damage to equipment on a microwave tower at Stony Creek, five hours from Inuvik on the Dempster Highway.

"(The winds) caused ice to fall and break a piece of metal which cut a cable from the tower," she said.

The outage began at 3:30 a.m. Friday.

The company was unable to get a repair crew to the site as the Dempster Highway was closed due to the storm, and the winds were too high to travel by helicopter. Patch said winds reached up to 190 km/h at the Stony Creek site, the equivalent to a category 3 hurricane.

Long distance and data service (including Internet, cellular telephone calls, texts and e-mails) were disrupted in Fort McPherson, Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.

The storm put a stranglehold on the region, causing whiteout conditions due to strong, gusting winds that reached up to 70 km/h in Inuvik, shutting all road systems in and out of Inuvik and surrounding communities and cancelling flights.

The constant winds caused drifting snow on the roads and buried parking lots and driveways. A dip on Firth Street between Bonnetplume and Loucheux Road quickly accumulated a hidden drift that caught a few drivers off guard Saturday night. One car became stuck at the top of Carn Street for more than an hour until neighbours dug it out. The wind was blowing so fiercely it covered his tracks within minutes making reversing impossible.

People in town with Ice Wireless service were the lucky ones. The alternative cellphone service provider in Inuvik that usually uses NorthwesTel's system, bypassed the problem by rerouting its cellular traffic to SSI Micro's main satellite uplink in Ottawa, providing service to its customers during the disruption, according to a press release from the company.

The communications outage included debit and bank machine access, which left people counting their pennies as the weekend wore on and stores were only accepting cash.

With CIBC unable to tap into accounts without network access, sales around town dwindled. From the liquor store to the cafe, people were not spending what limited cash they had on them when the outage struck.

"As lot of people use debit and Visa, we did have a drop in sales," said Cliff Stringer, manager of North Mart. With the phone lines out, there was no way to validate an imprinted credit card.

Stringer said people were spending less and staple items and perishables went fast. By Monday morning only a few one-litre cartons of milk remained in the store's cooler.

"The dry groceries are OK, we carry a fair bit of stock but as for the fresh - fresh meats, your produce, your milk and eggs - we're waiting on that stuff," Stringer said.

With the town running dry of dairy and produce Stringer decided to fly in essentials, which were scheduled to arrive yesterday.

However, Stringer said prices will remain the same.

"We'll take the hit."

The storm eased off on Sunday, and NorthwesTel repair crews were able to reach the damaged microwave tower Monday, temporarily repairing the problem by 1 p.m. and fully repairing it by approximately 3 p.m. The Dempster Highway remained closed until late Monday.

Yvonne Bilan-Wallace, spokesperson for Environment Canada, said temperatures in Inuvik reached 2.3 C on Friday, but did not break the historical daily record of 5.5 C.

She added Environment Canada lost data from other communities in the region, such as Aklavik, due to the windy conditions.

Bilan-Wallace said the Delta region is in for abnormally low temperatures for this time of year. "A ridge of high pressure is building in the area and really below normal temperatures are expected for some time," she said.

- with files from Andrew Livingstone

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