Wascana Drive ‘in darkness’ for over 5 months

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This article was published 27/05/2025 (303 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon man said he’s worried for his neighbours and family after multiple street lights on his road have been off for the last five months.

Omobowale Okedina, who lives on Wascana Drive, said about five street lights have been without power since Dec. 19, and his kids have since avoided leaving the house in the evening.

“For the past six months, we are in darkness,” said Okedina. “We have elderly people, we have people with disabilities, we have (kids). My kids are afraid to go out at night.”

Okedina said he has reached out to Manitoba Hydro about 20 times and is frustrated that the service hasn’t flipped the switch back on.

“I have complained to them several times,” he said. “Sometimes I attempt to leave a message on their machine with them, to leave a message that someone will contact me. Nobody gets back to me.”

Okedina said people on his street aren’t happy with how things are going, but most people don’t care enough to speak out.

“I’m not going to keep quiet,” said Okedina. “Because this is serious.”

Scott Powell, director of corporate communications with Manitoba Hydro, said normally repairs take “nowhere near” the more than five months street lights on Wascana Drive have been out.

Powell said the reason for the extended outage is that the City of Brandon asked Hydro to temporarily cut power to the lights in November so it could do underground repairs on a watermain. He said while the city completed the repair, it also accidentally damaged an underground service and didn’t realize it until the site was re-filled.

He said Hydro had to wait for the ground to thaw and will be fixing the site in the “next little bit,” but didn’t give a specific time for how long that might be.

“It won’t be months, it’s going to be as soon as possible,” said Powell. “We always do our best to respond to these as quickly as possible.”

He said repairs like this almost never take this long to happen, but by the time the problem was identified, Hydro wasn’t able to fix it.

Okedina said he did not receive a notice from either Manitoba Hydro or the City of Brandon once they knew it would be an extended outage. He said it would have at least helped knowing why nothing was done.

“They didn’t communicate anything with us,” said Okedina. “No notice, nothing.”

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said Manitoba Hydro is solely responsible for the Wascana street lights, and that he talked to Okedina last month about the problems on the street, and told him how to report the problem.

Fawcett said staff filled out an online form about the lights, which he said the city normally doesn’t do. He said people should fill out the forms themselves on Manitoba Hydro’s website, and shouldn’t rely on the city, as staff have other obligations to worry about.

The city did not provide an explanation on how the mistake happened during last year’s underground repairs, and why notices weren’t sent out. Powell didn’t know if notices from Manitoba Hydro were sent out either.

» alambert@brandonsun.com, with files from Michele McDougall