Power returning to city following deliberate outage by Hydro
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2015 (3724 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Power is beginning to return to the west side of the city following a deliberate outage by Manitoba Hydro earlier today.
The energy company decided to pull the plug to minimize surprise outages and damage caused by high winds and ice-covered Hydro lines in Brandon and the surrounding area.
"When the winds pick up and its got that weight of ice on the line they tend to blow back and forth, so they were bouncing and in some instances even wrapping themselves around one another," Hydro public affairs officer Bruce Owen said.
Owen says the "galloping lines" put a lot of stress on Hydro poles and can even cause them to crack, which causes a prolonged outage that it truly uncontrolled.
Crews shut the power off at 11:20 a.m. and it was turned back on roughly 90 minutes later, approximately 1,100 customers were affected.
Shoppers Mall also experienced a lengthy power outage Thursday morning due to the weather conditions.
"The power went out here at 5:30 this morning and came back on about 9 a.m.," mall general manager Kim James said. "We get the odd power surge now and again, this is probably one of the longer periods it’s been down."
The mall usually opens at 9:30 a.m. on Thursdays, but James says management had to lock the doors until the power came back on — causing merchants and employees to be locked out.
Tim Hortons was the only business in the mall that was affected by the outage as it starts serving at 8 a.m.
Owens says Hydro crews have been using various methods to clear ice from lines all over the province since Monday due to hoar frost, freezing rain and snow.
"It kind of compounded everything, we had the same thing last year," Owen said, adding that while similar problems have happened in the past, having extensive issues two years in a row in "noteworthy."
Over the past five days, crews have de-iced more than 1,500 kms of lines in southern Manitoba and the Parkland area.