Manitoba Hydro apologized Monday after a weekend wind storm coincided with the maintenance of an online service that allows customers to track and report power issues — leaving thousands of people in the dark about the status of widespread outages.
The public utility went ahead with “important upgrades to internal systems” of its online outage map Saturday, despite weather warnings projecting high winds to strike the province early that morning, spokesperson Peter Chura said in a phone interview.
“These are systems that we use to organize and assign work, and like many computer systems we all use, it required an update to function properly,” Chura said. “It’s a project that’s been in the works for several months… so (cancelling the maintenance) would have delayed the project for weeks or months.”
Hydro took the unusual step of staffing a 24-7 call centre over the weekend in anticipation of potential outages, but the phone service was swiftly overwhelmed by reports of downed lines, damaged infrastructure and power outages, he said.
Environment and Climate Change Canada tracked sustained winds between 60 to 70 kilometres per hour, with gusts reaching more than 90 km/h in some areas of the province.
Hydro fielded 5,900 phone calls Saturday and Sunday, with average call wait times of about six minutes and 11 minutes on each day, respectively. Some customers experienced “very long wait times — unacceptably long wait times — and some calls may not have been answered at all,” Chura said.
The public utility provided updates on a few key outages in several social media posts, garnering comments, questions and complaints from customers online, he said.
The map was restored Sunday at about 1 p.m. after some people had been without power for many hours.
“That was inconvenient and frustrating for many customers and for that we apologize,” Chura said. “We did have a contingency plan in place… but that plan proved to be inadequate.”
Hydro customer Janice Van Dasselaar said she spent nearly two hours on hold trying to report downed lines at her cottage near Lac du Bonnet on Saturday.
“I couldn’t believe it. They knew that this storm was coming because there was a weather warning on their website,” she said. “They knew darn well there could have been problems. I don’t know what they were thinking.”
Van Dasselaar described sitting inside her cabin on Dobals Road Friday night, watching rain batter the windowpanes and listening to winds that sounded like a “roaring train.”
She woke the following morning to find a downed power line draped across a roadway, preventing her from leaving the cabin. A second line was hanging near a tree, causing a potential fire hazard, she said.
Van Dasselaar called 911 and then got on the line with Hydro at about 9 a.m. When she finally connected with the call centre roughly two hours later, she was told there was no timeline for repair, she said.
“I can understand how busy they were for the weekend to get the work done, but (it’s not good) when you’ve got wires hanging and you’re worried that your yard is going to burn down and there is nobody to answer the phone,” she said.
“We were scared to drive our car out because sometimes the ground around a downed line is energized and we weren’t going to take any chances.”
Hydro recommends people to stay at least 10 metres away and call emergency services immediately if they encounter a downed power line.
On Sunday, after spending the night in the dark, Van Dasselaar called Hydro three times to request updates on a repair timeline. Each time she was connected with an agent within a few minutes, she said.
When it became clear Hydro crews would not be able to respond immediately, she and her husband left the cottage by driving into the ditch, she said.
The repair was eventually completed just after midnight Monday, Van Dasselaar said.
“I can’t say enough about the guys that showed up.… Those guys know what they are doing and they get their work done lickety-split,” she said. “But like I said, phone call-wise, it was just absolutely horrendous.”
Hydro is looking into the weekend storm response, Chura said, adding the results of that review may inform how it schedules required maintenance in the future.
Nearly all of the weather related outages were fixed by 7 a.m. Monday, he said.
tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca
Tyler Searle
Reporter
Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press‘s city desk. A graduate of Red River College Polytechnic’s creative communications program, he wrote for the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, Selkirk Record and Express Weekly News before joining the paper in 2022. Read more about Tyler.
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