In the dark: SaskPower says 500 customers won’t have power overnight

Some SaskPower customers will remain in the dark Monday night due to the snowstorm that hit southeast Saskatchewan on the weekend.

In an update Monday at 5 p.m., SaskPower said about 500 customers in the Carnduff, Auberton, Parkman and Torquay areas wouldn’t have power overnight. The hope was that they’d have power restored by 6 p.m. Tuesday.

As of 11 a.m. Monday, about 4,500 customers were without power. At 5 p.m., the company said 4,000 of those would have electricity by the end of the day.

The estimated time the power was to be restored included 6 p.m. for rural areas north of Estevan (including the Estevan airport), and 10 p.m. for the town of Wapella, the Stoughton area, Redvers and rural regions east towards Manitoba, rural areas east of Alida (including Storthoaks), rural areas east of Oxbow, and the town of North Portal.

SaskPower spokesperson Scott McGregor said 35 crews were working across the region to help restore power. They were dealing with the large amount of snow and cold temperatures that were causing issues, according to McGregor.

“The ground is still pretty wet in the southeast because of the temperatures hovering around the freezing mark,” he said.

“We are utilizing helicopters to help conduct the damage assessment. Those helicopter patrols should be wrapped up by the end of the day.”

According to SaskPower, crews started working Monday at 7 a.m., to repair damaged infrastructure caused by the storm.

“Thus far, SaskPower has logged 890 damage points (either a power pole, crossarm, or power line that has sustained damage) across the affected area,” the company said in a media release. “Over 540 power poles have been dispatched to the southeast, and more are expected to be sent throughout today and into tomorrow.”

There’s an area just west of Estevan that had roughly 30 poles knocked over by the wind gusts, McGregor said.

“The big push right now is to get to all of the areas that have damage. And it’s really spread out, so that’s the thing we’re working against; the geography,” McGregor said.

More information regarding outages and ETRs is available here.

Meanwhile, SaskTel said phone and Internet services remain out in some areas, including Storthoaks and White Bear. Wireless service also isn’t available in and around the communities of Blewett and Outram.

SaskTel said there wasn’t an estimated time of repair, and some services could stay out until the power is back on.