Coronach -
In March of 2009, Coronach and Rockglen area residents went without power for over 20 hours and in April of 2009, Coronach sat in the dark for another 11 hours, but the 53.5 hour power outage experience from January 23 to the 25 of 2010 shattered those records.
Just as the sun was setting on Saturday, January 23, the lights went out all across southern Saskatchewan. SaskPower customers, in the communities of Rockglen, Coronach, Willow Bunch, Bengough, Ogema, Big Beaver, Fife Lake, Lisieux, Harptree, Minton and surrounding areas were all, at some time without power between Saturday, January 23 and Monday, January 25.
When the sun rose on Sunday morning, residents all over the south country awoke to chilly homes. Those who hadn't already, set to work gathering wood, setting up generators and checking on their neighbours.
The Coronach town council set up a central meeting place at the Coronach Elks Hall. In preparating for Y2K, the beginning of 2000, the Coronach Emergency Measures organization purchased a generator and prepared the hall in case of emergency.
This equipment is now available for the town to use in such cases as the recent power outage.
On Sunday, Coronach residents were welcomed to the Coronach Elks Hall where the generator was hooked up to provide heat and some power to the hall. Elaine Winter made a huge pot of soup to share and the Coronach Co-op donated meat, cheese, crackers and goodies for hungry residents.
Many people gathered at the hall to visit, play cards, study for impending exams or to just warm up.
Trina Vellacott, along with her husband Curtis, her two year old daughter Teagan and Trina's parents Kevin and Brenda Obrigewitsch and other family spent some time at the Elks Hall. "I'm glad they had that, it was nice to go somewhere a little bit warmer and visit with people and have something hot to drink and eat and the volunteers that did that deserve a big thank you." said Trina.
Reports in the media said that Rockglen had a community gathering place at their community hall as well as the local hotel opened their doors for residents.
Sharon Otteson, who lives on a farm north of Bengough said, "The housing manager in Bengough is trying to find places for some of her elderly ladies that have nowhere. The're cold and there's nowhere for them to go." Otteson continued, "We live on the farm, we have no heat at all in our house. We've been living in our basement, it is staying not bad. The temperature has been 60° but it's down to 54° tonight." Ottesen was in Bengough for the Deric Ruttan concert on Monday evening and planned to stay in town with her mother, whose home was staying quite warm.
According to Barb Smith, who lives on a farm near Bengough, the power in the Bengough area flickered off and on all evening Saturday, going off from 4 till 7 pm, then off again from 9:30 till 10:30, off again at 11:00, when it remained off until Monday night. Smith's kept warm on their farm with a generator but were without water and like all Bengough residents, were without land or cell phones.
Many residents, such as Greg and Renee Willford who live on a farm near Coronach, were moving generators around keeping a number of family's homes warm. Greg's parents, Pat and Earl, are away and their home's temperature had dropped to 3°.
When bedtime arrived and still no power in sight, the Coronach Health Centre, who were operating minimal power with a generator, welcomed those in need of a bed.
Seven residents slept on the floor of the main patient lounge at the health centre on Sunday evening. "We are taking people in, if they bring their own blankets and pillows and they can sleep in and during the day they can go to the Elks hall." said Barb Tomilin on Monday afternoon.
Tomilin reported on Wednesday that six residents slept in the board room on Monday night.
Sunday at 6:00 p.m., a state of emergency was declared by the Coronach Town Council and they continued to monitor the water levels in town and look out for the safety of the residents.
A state of emergency is necessary to safeguard local officials, coordinators and town council that are forced to make decisions for the protection of the public.
All classes were cancelled at the Coronach, Rockglen and Bengough schools for Monday and scheduled exams were rescheduled.
As of Monday at noon, the town's water supply was sufficient to carry the residents for a minimum of one week. "In case of a fire, stand by equipment is available to restart the wells to replenish the water supply if a fire was to deplete the supply." said Murray Setrum, town administrator.
The sewer system in Coronach is fully operational with automatic back up generators on all of the lift stations.
Once the roads opened up on Sunday, many residents traveled to purchase generators.
The Coronach Coop kept their doors open to try to service the needs of their customers.
Val Frey, Service Station manager at the Coronach Coop, put in a long day trying to do what she could. "The Coop is trying to continue services to the community while they have cold houses, no heat. We are supplying gas and diesel for their generators, we are supplying batteries, the propane tanks that are already filled. Anything to help them keep their houses warm and their vehicles going."
Although most of Southwest Saskatchewan was without power at some points, some, like Willow Bunch got power back much sooner. Margaret Brown, Willow Bunch R.M. administrator reported that the power in the Willow Bunch area was out from approximately 5-7 p.m. Saturday night then again from 9 p.m. to 10:30 am Sunday. Residents had power for most of the day on Sunday with a couple of hours of outage. While they had power, residents were without water and sewer with town officials shutting down the water supply, guarding against damage that would be caused by the power outage.
Adding to the inconveniece of the power outage, many residents in the Willow Bunch and Bengough areas were without telephone service. Coronach residents that had a phone that would ring without power were able to use their landlines. Cell phone service was lost to the community of Coronach late Sunday afternoon.
Power was restored to the Bengough area around 10:00 p.m., part way through a candle lit concert by Deric Ruttan in the Big Muddy Inn.
Residents in the Coronach community were happy to see the street lights come on in Coronach shortly after 11:00 p.m.
Residents were warned by SaskPower that the fix was a "band-aid" and that they should expect temporary power outages until the major damage was completely repaired.
On Tuesday morning, Brent Parker, spokesperson for SaskPower said, "We want to apologize for the inconvenience this caused people in Coronach and area but we were working in some really difficult circumstances. The roads were impassible for most of the weekend, it was unsafe to work in those types of conditions and I think people can appreciate that."
"With the weather clearing a little bit, we are on this big time. We've got 40 people, a number of crews in the area trying to restore power to 200 or so customers that continue to be offline." said Parker.
According to Parker they expected to have all of the power restored by Tuesday afternoon.
"We had a problem with a 72KV line, alot of this results from a heavy build up of ice on the line. We had lines going down, poles going down, shield wire bending down causing faults and outages. We had fairly significant damage in a number of areas that we have to repair now. All of this is related to the weather."
"With certainly there is more than 20 poles down in various areas and there is likely many more than that. According to Parker, these more than 20 strutures are in the Coronach and Rockglen area that will have to be repaired or replaced. This was a major disturbance." said Parker.
Some residents expressed concern over the aging structures that they believed should have been fixed before.
Parker said, "We've made no secret of the fact that we have an aging infrastucture and that includes transmission, distrubution and power production and that is one of the reasons why we have a significant capital program, we're spending more money on capital projects than we ever have before and we certainly plan to spend at that pace for the next decade. . . our system is aging and that effects transmission and distrubution."
"Folks have to plan for this because eventhough we have a very reliable electrical system, there will be outages. Because we have extreme weather that comes through from time to time. I think it is best to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Keeping in mind though that our system is very reliable and people for the most part have uninterrupted electrical service." said Parker
The lights went out again on Tuesday afternoon for approximately three hours and then a planned power outage was announced for Thursday from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Classes were cancelled at the Coronach School for Thursday and all exams scheduled for that day were rescheduled for the following Monday, including a Grade 12 Biology final that was not a departmental.
Most businesses in Coronach planned to be closed for the day on Thursday.
