Manitoba Hydro is dealing with a slew of outages on Friday after a powerful dust storm hit the province. According to social media posts from the Crown corporation, Thursday’s high winds and dust storm caused downed power lines and fallen trees throughout southwest Manitoba. This has led to widespread outages in Winnipeg, as well as the Parkland and Westman regions. Though crews worked as quickly as possible to restore power, poor visibility and strong winds forced them to pause work on Thursday night. Manitoba Hydro will continue its efforts in the light of day, which means some customers won’t have power until later on Friday. As of Friday morning at 11 a.m., 5,500 customers are without power and 230 outages have been reported across southern Manitoba. A full look at the power outages in Manitoba is available online. Arborists dealing with tree cleanup A Winnipeg arborist said they have received some calls for tree damage from Thursday’s wind. “It’s not as much as we anticipated, but we are getting a volume of people asking for emergency tree response because full trees have blown down or weak branches have come down in their backyard,” said Simon Peacock with Green Drop Tree Care. Peacock said when his company is called, the crew will assess the scene, see what the damage is and work to carefully remove the tree as safely as possible from the area. He said residents should call arborists to assess their trees to see if they need to be removed or have branches cut before a storm hits. A spokesperson for the City of Winnipeg said as of Friday morning, the city has received 45 service requests for tree damage related to the winds, mainly for debris pickup. “The majority are fallen branches and only 4 requests are for fallen trees,” the spokesperson said. Martha Barwinski, Winnipeg’s chief forester, said proper pruning has also helped minimize the number of calls they have had following the storm. “We’ve made significant strides in improving our pruning cycle in a lot of neighborhoods throughout the city, and, and we’re able to maintain the trees,” she said. “We prune them for good structure, and also to put them in the best condition for when we have these kinds of events that there is much less damage that they incur.” Barwinski added that trees in Winnipeg haven’t fully leafed out yet due to the late spring, meaning damaged was reduced. “If we were talking a month from now, it would be a different story with regards to damage,” she said.
