Thousands of people lost power in Cape Breton over the weekend

An equipment malfunction knocked out power for parts of Cape Breton over the weekend.

More than 5,000 people in Glace Bay, N.S., and the surrounding communities experienced a pair of unexpected power outages on Friday and Saturday.

“I’ve heard reports of people with a one-week-old baby, for example, that had to find somewhere warm to go,” said Glace Bay Progressive Conservative MLA John White.

Businesses had to close, children’s extracurricular activities were cancelled and some people were angry.

White, who noted there was another significant power outage shortly before Christmas, said part of peoples' frustrations is that these kinds of outages are happening too frequently.

“In this day and age, we deserve to have a power system that we can trust and rely on, and that doesn’t seem to be the case right now,” White said.

“People were very frustrated. It’s January, it’s very cold,” said David MacKeigan, a Cape Breton Regional Municipality councillor.

The outages occurred during what has so far been the worst cold snap this winter. A comfort station opened over the weekend at the Glace Bay Miner’s Forum, but a lot of people stayed at home in the dark in temperatures well below freezing.

“It’s something that should never have happened,” MacKeigan said. “The infrastructure is just so old, should have been updated a long time ago.”

“We had a piece of equipment in the Glace Bay substation that failed,” Nova Scotia Power’s Matt Drover said.

Nova Scotia Power crews were at the Reserve Street substation on Monday making repairs.

The utility said they have heard people’s frustrations and are promising fewer outages once improvements to the area’s system are complete.

“There are seven feeders out of the Glace Bay substation,” Drover. “We’ll be working on every one of them. We’ll be changing poles. We’ll be replacing insulators. We’ll be making the system more resilient than what it is today.”

A meeting between NS Power representatives and elected officials was held in Glace Bay on Monday. White said he hopes to have another one about the too-frequent power outages that will be open to the public.

“The town hall meeting will be within weeks,” White said. “It’s just a matter of planning our schedules together and finding a location.”

NS Power said its mobile transformer is powering the area until more permanent repairs are completed.

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