Late night power outages keep EPCOR crews busy

CTV Edmonton: Power back on at local school After an Edmonton school was closed Monday morning, after a power outage knocked out it's heating system.

Hundreds of Edmontonians spent a few hours Sunday night without power, and one west end school had to be closed Monday morning in the wake of the outage.

EPCOR said crews had to deal with two power outages Sunday night, mainly in the Hamptons and Castledowns areas.

At one point, about 800 customers were affected by the outages that started at 6:20 and 6:40 p.m.

Officials said a number of customers had power again within an hour – although at about midnight, EPCOR tweeted crews were still working to restore power to some.

“In the Hamptons, we had a downed power line, and in Castledowns it was just a faulty cable,” EPCOR spokesperson Adam Sidon said Sunday night.

On Monday morning, Bessie Nichols School in southwest Edmonton had to be closed because there was no heat in the building; officials said the heat was knocked out by the power outage the night before.

Parents of students at the school were called to pick up their children shortly after school was supposed to start, most of the students stayed bundled up in the school gym, until their parents picked them up.

“We met with them at our one minute drop off zone and at the doors first thing in the morning to let them know we didn’t have any heat and that we only had one third of our power,” Principal Patricia Martyn said. “Those parents chose to take their children home with them this morning.”

On Monday morning, EPCOR officials said it would take a couple of hours to get everything in the school back up and running – later that afternoon, EPCOR said power had been restored at about 3:20 p.m.

School officials confirmed to CTV News that classes would resume Tuesday morning.

With files from Sarah Richter