Portage la Prairie recalls impact of 2019 Thanksgiving weekend blizzard

This hydro tower in Portage la Prairie, Man. suffered major damage from the storm. (Source: Manitoba Hydro)

WINNIPEG — One year ago on Thanksgiving weekend, southern Manitoba was slammed by a blizzard that prompted road closures, power outages, and tree damage throughout the region.

Portage la Prairie, Man. was one of the communities hit hardest by the storm, with almost half of the residents in the community and the surrounding area without power for several days.

Phil Carpenter, the Fire Chief for Portage la Prairie remembers the weather warnings coming out for the first day of the storm, and some winds and snow, on Thursday, October 10, with the storm gradually getting worse the next day.

"Roads were beginning to close at that time, trees were down, powerlines were down, so we had to look at housing people," he said in an interview with CTV News Winnipeg earlier this week.

Carpenter said the city began stepping into action quickly, setting up shelter space at the Herman Prior Centre for travellers who were stuck in the city due to the Trans-Canada Highway closing.

Carpenter, a firefighter with the city for 42 years, has been chief for the last 12 years. While he has seen blizzards before hit the community (such as the Storm of the Century in 1997), he hadn't experienced one quite like October 2019.

"It was such wet, heavy snow, and strong winds that just toppled so many trees, and powerlines down all over the place, lots of calls were happening for a long period of time."

During the storm, over 8,000 customers were without power in the city and surrounding area.

"We had to power, we had no backup generators for our sewage lift stations, so we had to get communication out there to our citizens to limit their use of water," Carpenter said, noting the city was able to get temporary generators eventually.

One year later - work is still being done to repair the damage caused by the storm.

Bruce Owen, a spokesperson for Manitoba Hydro, said while most of the clean-up and repairs were completed in the weeks following the storm, some work is still being completed on power lines west of Portage that were damaged in the storm.

He said the work is not affecting customers.

"It's just adding that redundancies, that added protection to the system should there be another similar storm," he said.

"Our goal is always to have a system which is reliable even in the worst of times, by that I mean we can get it up and running quickly."

Owen said Hydro crews had everyone who lost power back up and running within two weeks.

LESSONS LEARNED

Carpenter said after power was restored, and the blizzard cleaned up, the city's emergency department began looking at ways they could improve their emergency response plan.

"Communication was a key component to letting everybody know what was going on as far as when the roads were going to be reopened, approximately when the power was going to be restored," he said. "We were using our Portage Connect system to get the messaging out there and keep everybody informed at the same time."

Carpenter said he feels the city did a good job of keeping people informed during the disaster but said they also have room to improve on their communication.

He was thankful for the emergency response team for their work during the storm.

"Everybody worked as an excellent team in accomplishing all of the goals that were presented to us," he said.

-with files from CTV's Danton Unger, Jeremie Charron, and Jon Hendricks