Politicians, chiefs tour Pimicikamak devastation

PIMICIKAMAK CREE NATION — A days-long power outage continues to wreak havoc on a northern Manitoba First Nation, as hundreds of homes are surveyed for damage and leaders visit the community to see the destruction first-hand.

Murphy Trout heard a quiet trickle coming from a room near his bathroom Tuesday night. When he went to inspect his crawl space, he discovered it was full of water.

“I don’t know what to do, I’m no plumber. They haven’t come around to look at it yet,” Trout said, looking down at the space. Some of his personal belongings were in there and will need to be thrown out.

The water trickled out of his home; a now-frozen puddle covered a large section of his backyard.

Trout lives in one of the older houses in the community. The 45-year-old home is at risk of being condemned, but he said he has nowhere else to go.

“I’ll stay here as long as there’s a roof on the house,” he said.

Many have faced a similar fate as Trout; the community’s lead plumber, Randy Spence, has assessed upwards of 800 homes in the last few days and said about 200 have sustained damage.

The community, located about 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg, suffered an 110-hour-long power outage that began Dec. 28 owing to a downed Manitoba Hydro power line.

The days without power caused water systems to freeze, leading to burst pipes and overflowing sewage.

A delegation of politicians and Indigenous leaders visited the community Wednesday to get a sense of the damage the outage caused.

Spence estimated it could be in the millions of dollars and take weeks to merely complete the assessment. The timeline for repairs and for residents to return is still unknown.

Nearly 20 plumbers are in Pimicikamak, so water service can be restored to about 100 seniors’ homes.

Spence said there was little that could have prevented the tragedy. Water lines froze within hours and no amount of backup could have stopped it.

“You would need a generator for every household. You would need a backup plan on everything. There would have to be a whole new grid structure for that,” said Todd McConnell, a plumber with AllPro Mechanical. The company is in the area to help assess about 1,350 homes.

The neighbouring Cross Lake community has a population of about 500, but Pimicikamak has about 7,500 residents. Approximately 4,000 people were evacuated to Thompson, The Pas, Flin Flon and Winnipeg.

Pimicikamak Chief David Monias has repeatedly called for the federal government to dispatch Canadian Armed Forces to help with repairs.

Monias repeated the request directly to Northern and Arctic Affairs MP Rebecca Chartrand, who is the local MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.

Chartrand said she would discuss it with her colleagues, adding it’s not her call to make.

Premier Wab Kinew said he supports the call for military assistance, but stopped short of announcing any provincial funding for the First Nation.

“I did ask (Manitoba Hydro) to also examine the idea of putting the power line along the road. Will that make a difference? How feasible is it? That’s a clear ask that I heard today, and so we’re asking Hydro to take a serious look at that,” Kinew told reporters during the tour.

Monias said the community has, for a long time, asked the utility to look at relocating transmission lines so they are easily accessible in the event repairs are needed in the future.

If that had happened years ago, the devastation could have been totally avoided, the chief said.

In an email, Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura stated that installing a new power line close to a road is no guarantee against power outages. Putting the line along the road would double its length, and if it a storm caused significant damage there could still be outages of two days or more.

Hydro does not yet know what caused the recent line failure.

Four homes burned during the outage; with no water to fight the flames, the houses could not be saved.

All three of the community’s water treatment plants are operating again, but a pipe burst in one of the older facilities and water is still leaking inside the building.

The plant was built in 1993 and much of the equipment in it is obsolete. Plant operator Leon Garrick has been making some repairs with duct tape.

“It’s very stressful, hardly any sleep. You eat when you can,” he said.

The community is under a boil-water advisory until the necessary repairs can be made. Garrick is worried another power outage could take out the treatment plant and cause even more damage in the community.

“We’re on edge,” he said.

Monias put out a call for tradespeople and engineers to travel to the First Nation to repair damaged infrastructure and perform inspections. His call for military help was, in part, due to the fatigue local tradespeople are experiencing.

“Everybody’s saying, ‘let’s use local resources.’ Well, people haven’t slept, maybe with two hours sleep and then trying to work again. That’s why we need the help that we asked for,” he said.

The federal government announced $1.4 million in support for Pimicikamak to aid in repairs.

Hydro left a large generator as a backup for Pimicikamak’s water treatment plant, along with six heavy-duty heaters and four trucks and trailers to transport them.

Shortly before Monias took the delegation around the community, he posted to social media that the community’s resilience during the situation should not be mistaken for “acceptance of chronic neglect.”

» Winnipeg Free Press