SaskPower sending help to restore power in Manitoba

SaskPower is assisting in cleanup efforts to restore power for thousands of residents in Manitoba.

Spokesperson Joel Cherry confirmed SaskPower is sending workers, trucks and equipment to get people in Manitoba back online after the province issued a state of emergency early Sunday morning.

“We saw something to a much lesser extent a couple weeks ago. (Manitoba) dealt with this on a much, much greater scale,” he said.

“They’ve been working through the weekend to try to restore power, and we’re certainly trying to support them in that effort.”

Cherry confirmed 23 people from SaskPower are working in Manitoba, but couldn’t narrow down a return date. Much of SaskPower’s help is going towards what he called, “transmission and distribution infrastructure.”

“They needed a lot of wood polls, cross arms – that sort of thing,” Cherry said.

Declaring a state of emergency allowed Manitoba to access mutual aid agreements with neighbouring utilities companies.

“Being right next door to Manitoba here, we’re among the first to step in and help out,” Cherry said. “If the situation was reversed… we would put out that call and we’d look to our neighbours to respond, as well. Utilities in North America will call out to each other in times of need such as this.”

Sending aid to Manitoba isn’t affecting Unifor’s ongoing strike at Saskatchewan’s seven crown corporations, including SaskPower.

Power line technicians, many of the workers sent to Manitoba, are members of The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union and are not part of any labour disruption.

“Our ability to respond to power outages hasn’t changed, and neither has our ability to respond to our neighbours in a crisis,” Cherry said.