Family waits 4 months to have power restored

A mother and son say they are happy to have the power restored at their southwest Brandon home after being without it for more than four months.

But advocates say the province needs to speed up inspections for modular homes to prevent similar delays.

Sharon Pompana, 75, and her 43-year-old son, Brad Nielsen, had been in and out of hotel rooms since an electrical panel fire at their modular home on June 2. They stayed at their home without power for much of that time, relying on takeout and sandwiches as they didn’t have a working fridge.

“It’s starting to get cold at night, and I’m worrying — winter’s going to be coming,” Nielsen said in an interview before an official with the province told them their power was going to be restored. “I’m starting to worry about what if the pipes start freezing and things like that, we’re going to have to get another hotel again.”

The mother and son said they hadn’t been hearing any updates for weeks — until an official from the province called them Thursday just before noon.

The Sun had put in a request for comment from a minister just after 9 a.m. on why it was taking so long for the family’s power to be restored.

Pompana said thankfully all of the costs they’ve incurred while staying at hotels have been covered by insurance.

They stayed at their home as often as possible during the summer, as evacuees from wildfires took up hundreds of hotel rooms across the city. The duo had been in and out of different hotels during the hottest days of the year, when living without air conditioning at home was unbearable.

After dealing with insurance and electricians, they waited for Manitoba Hydro to turn their power back on. That had taken longer than expected, with Hydro needing an inspector to evaluate the home before it could proceed, Nielsen said. They then went to their MLA, Wayne Balcaen.

“This is a failure of government across the whole sector,” Balcaen (Brandon West) said.

Balcaen said Hydro and Manitoba Labour aren’t working together like they should be, which was causing the prolonged outage.

“They’re completely out of sync on how this is happening.”

The Sun reached out to the minister responsible for Hydro, Adrien Sala, and Labour Minister Malaya Marcelino, but didn’t receive comment from them by press time on Thursday.

Having inspections like this one done for modular homes has been a problem in Manitoba for the past three years, said Josh Genn, CEO of Best Buy Homes.

“It’s tough and frustrating. All you really want to do is to get your home hooked up,” Genn said.

Genn said inspections of modular homes have to be done by third-party inspectors. The only qualified third-party inspectors are at the factories where the homes are made, meaning the only way an inspection can happen is to fly people in.

He said he has heard of people being displaced in other parts of the province because they can’t get their homes re-inspected.

He wants the province to change regulations for modular homes so they are more in line with regulations for regular houses.

“Just start treating housing as housing.”

Hydro told the Sun that these are still new issues the province is in the midst of fixing.

“Due to recent changes to regulations regarding manufactured homes, Manitoba Hydro is developing a process and documentation for inspecting manufactured homes,” wrote media relations officer Peter Chura. “The province has recently published a bulletin clarifying roles and responsibilities which Manitoba Hydro is using as a guideline.”

Part of that bulletin says it is Hydro’s responsibility for all home inspections across the province, except in Winnipeg, and that a home “cannot be ‘re-certified’ after it leaves the manufacturing facility.”

“We can appreciate the difficulty and frustration for customers. In the meantime, Manitoba Hydro is working with the customer … to resolve their situation.”

After hearing that the province will go forward with the hookup, Balcaen said he’s thankful his constituents will have power restored, but that the fix took too long.

“I don’t think that this would have been resolved if we didn’t advocate for it, and certainly put on pressure from the media,” he said.

On Thursday, Pompana said she didn’t know when exactly power will go up. She was waiting at the family’s unheated home all afternoon for someone to show up.

She said this isn’t the first time this has happened. They went through the same ordeal after their home caught fire because of lightning two or three years ago. That time it also took about four months to have power restored.

“The first fire we had, it was pretty much back and forth all summer,” Pompana said.

They also reached out to their MLA that time, before the power came back on.

» alambert@brandonsun.com