District hit by power outages during extreme cold weather

By Duane Hicks
Staff writer

For the second time in 24 hours, Hydro One crews had to work to restore power to residents in the west end of Rainy River District on Monday morning after another power outage was caused by a transformer overload (equipment failure in the frigid weather).
Hydro One’s Daniele Gauvin said there was a interruption at 7:40 a.m. and crews were dispatched to redirect power to district communities west of Fort Frances, from Alberton to Rainy River.
The estimated time of restoration was originally 10:30 a.m., but fortunately, power was restored to all 3,772 customers by about 8:45 a.m.
Hydro One also reported an outage Sunday night, which started shortly after 7 p.m. Fort Frances residents only experienced a loss of power for under 10 minutes but it lasted for between three and five-plus hours for 3,700 district residents living west of Fort Frances. According to Gauvin, about 1,700 district residents were restored to power by 10:20 p.m., with the remaining 2,000 back on line by 12:38 a.m.
Like the one Monday morning, this first 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,” said Gauvin.