Duane Hicks
FORT FRANCES—Hydro One crews had to work to restore power to residents in the west end of Rainy River District on Monday morning after a second outage in about 12 hours.
Spokeswoman Daniele Gauvin said crews were dispatched to redirect power to communities west of Fort Frances—from Alberton to Rainy River—following an interruption at 7:40 a.m.
The estimated time of restoration originally was set for 10:30 a.m., but fortunately power was restored to all but 40 of the 3,772 customers affected by about 8:45 a.m.
The remaining 40 were expected to have power restored over the course of Monday morning.
Hydro One also reported an outage Sunday night, which began shortly after 7 p.m.
Fort Frances residents only experienced a loss of power for less than 10 minutes but it lasted for between three and five-plus hours for more than 3,700 residents living west of town.
Gauvin said about 1,700 district residents had power restored by 10:20 p.m., with the remaining 2,000 back on line by 12:38 a.m.
“It’s my fault. I rented a movie at 7 p.m. and [the power] went out at 7:07,” joked Ken Johnston, editor of the Rainy River Record.
On a more serious note, he added it was a good thing the power wasn’t out any longer given the night was getting mighty cold.
“Thank God I’ve got wood heat,” Johnston remarked.
“The furnace won’t run without electricity even if it’s a gas furnace,” he noted. “A lot of them are electronic ignition.
“It’s cold, it’s cold,” he added. “I was running my wood stove full bore and was watching football, and I shut her down when I put some new wood in there because I didn’t want to get a chimney fire—birch bark takes off so quick and so hot.
“So I shut her down and forgot about it, and 15 minutes later, the temperature had dropped three degrees in the front room of the house. That’s how quick it goes down when it’s this cold.
“Thank God there’s no wind to speak of, as of yet,” Johnston added.
Hydro One said Monday the outage was caused by equipment failure due to “extreme conditions.”
“It was what we call a centre phase, which helps support all of the conductors or power lines, and so the power lines were damaged, and we repaired them,” noted Gauvin.
(Fort Frances Daily Bulletin)
