Southern Sask. towns at standstill in massive power outage

Southern towns at standstill in outage Towns in the southeast portion of the province were at a standstill while dealing with a lack of power. Taylor Rattray explains.

The town of Stoughton was at a standstill on Tuesday in the midst of a massive power outage impacting the province.

The entire community is without power, forcing businesses to close up shop. Local restaurant Crossroads Inn closed for the day, and the owner estimates the outage will cost her thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

“We can’t do any business today,” Christine White said. “We’ve had to shut our doors, health won’t let us open the kitchen. That would be our main sales during the day, would be food.”

Newhope Pharmacy stayed open for the day, but owner Chelsey Schindel says he wasn’t able to do much without internet or power. He’s only refilling emergency prescriptions.

“As far as prescriptions go, we will get by today,” Schindel said. “It starts to become a factor if things are going to freeze up. My refrigerators, we have to keep our vaccines at below eight degrees, so that’ll become a factor here.”

SaskPower says it is working to address the situation in the southeast portion of the province and power was restored to Stoughton late Tuesday afternoon. Other communities remain without power in the southern portion of the province.

High winds are forecasted for some areas of the province overnight Tuesday, which SaskPower says could complicate restoring power. Power outages could last overnight, according to SaskPower.