Residents across Yellowknife and Dettah were without power for some four hours on Thursday evening after “wildlife contact” at the city’s Jackfish substation.
The substation takes power supplied by the hydro plants and Yellowknife’s diesel backups and sends it out to homes. It’s a central piece of apparatus and accounts for much of the infrastructure you can see when you drive past Jackfish, on the city’s outskirts.
The NWT Power Corporation said power was fully restored by 10:20pm, stating “there were a number of factors that came into play in trying to restore power tonight.”
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“What we believe has happened is wildlife contact at the Jackfish substation,” NWT Power Corporation spokesperson Doug Prendergast told Cabin Radio.
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“We haven’t been able to nail down that cause definitively, but every sign points to that.”
Prendergast added that while Behchokǫ̀ also experienced a brief outage, crews had since restored power to the community using diesel generation.
“We recognize this is frustrating – both the timing and the duration – but want to assure electricity users in Yellowknife and surrounding area that we’re working hard to get power back up as soon as we possibly can,” he said.
In general, the power corporation says it aims to restore power to customers within 45 minutes of a blackout starting.
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However, a problem at the Jackfish substation has the potential to affect both hydro and diesel at the same time – the only two means by which Yellowknife can access power.
City facilities open
The City of Yellowknife said it had “invoked cold-weather protocols” and set up its emergency operations committee to handle the fallout from the outage.
Municipal enforcement officers were dispatched to key intersections, with traffic lights and street lights out. RCMP had offered additional traffic control.
City facilities like the fieldhouse, aquatic centre and arenas remained open, city manager Stephen Van Dine told Cabin Radio shortly after 8:30pm, and are still running on their own backup power.
“Where residents feel as though they would like to go and have a change of scenery and warm themselves, they are more than welcome to do so,” he said.
Van Dine urged residents whose homes are losing heat to leave a tap running where possible “at a trickle” to prevent freeze-up.
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Asked if the city shared residents’ frustration about the duration of the outage, Van Dine called it “a difficult situation.”
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“We know that they happen, we prepare as best we can for them,” he said.
“We open up lines of communication with our utility companies. Naka Power and the NWT Power Corp have been giving us regular updates, and we are encouraging them to keep that information flowing so we can share it with you, as well as prepare our facilities as as need be.
“But it’s obviously not a great situation in the middle of February, in winter, in Yellowknife.”
Miriam Bosiljevac contributed reporting.
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