Weekend storms left up to 50,000 in the dark province-wide: SaskPower

Cleanup crews in Aylsham. (Courtesy: Allen Malberg)

Storms that swept across Saskatchewan over the weekend resulted in a trail of damage, toppled trees and knocked out power to tens of thousands of customers.

While communities band together to repair the damage, some rural residents say they were left waiting for electricity to be restored for days.

The storm’s impact was felt across northeastern parts of Saskatchewan. In the village of Aylsham, about 30 minutes southeast of Nipawin, an estimated 175 residents were left without power after Saturday night’s storm.

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“There were five trees down, big, big trees, not little ones, like 80-year-old pine trees,” resident Allen Malberg told CTV News.

Fallen trees and high wind, including tornadoes in some areas, brought down power lines in several communities, contributing to the widespread outages.

“Our first major outage was on Saturday evening. That affected a very large area that included Prince Albert, Mildred, Shellbrook, Spiritwood, Candle Lake and Hudson Bay. In total, about 50,000 customers were affected,” SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry says.

With power still out in many rural areas surrounding Aylsham as of Tuesday afternoon, some residents have been making trips into Nipawin to access drinking water, washrooms and showers.

A similar situation continues near Codette, south of Nipawin, where Brice Drinkwater says the prolonged outage has been frustrating.

“They’ve (Sask Power) had a big job. I’m not taking that away. But I think from an overall standpoint, it doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence in them being able to provide reliable service,” Drinkwater said.

Malberg says he has seen SaskPower crews working around the clock and acknowledges the scale of the cleanup. He says so many trees remain down that he’s been forced to use back roads to get around as residents continue to restore order to their communities.

Drinkwater says keeping daily life going for his household has meant taking time off work to set up generators and manage without electricity.

SaskPower tells us, the weekend storm created the highest number of outages the province has experienced in four years. As of early Tuesday afternoon, just over 500 customers remained without power.

The Crown corporation said it expected to restore service to most remaining customers by the end of Tuesday.

SaskPower is also reminding residents to stay at least 10 metres away from any downed power line and report it immediately through the utility’s emergency line.