SATURDAY’S SOUTH MUSKOKA POWER OUTAGES BLAMED ON ONTARIO HYDRO’S BRACEBRIDGE TRANSMISSION STATION FAILURE AND SNAPPED POLE LINES
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
MUSKOKA — Saturday’s cold snap, which left more than 13,300 south Muskoka customers without hydro for much of the day and into Sunday was caused by a transformer switch failure at Hydro One’s Bracebridge Transmission Station at the end of Gray Road off Monica Lane.
In addition, a broken cross arm and a broken pole affected two key distribution lines that serve the area’s distribution stations resulting in widespread outages to both Bracebridge and Gravenhurst through Hydro One’s main power supply, they say.
People were left in the cold and dark, on one of the coldest days of the winter with temperatures hovering around minus-30 below as forewarned the health unit, which issued a weekend freezing cold alert a day before on Friday.
Hydro One tells MuskokaTODAY.com that 6,000 of its customers were affected at the peak.
In Gravenhust more than 6,000 Elexicon Energy customers were also affected, that utility tells us.
And in Bracebridge 1,144 Lakeland Power customers were left powerless, Chris Litschko, CEO of Lakeland Holding said Tuesday.
He said the other 5,400 of their customers that are served by the Muskoka transformer station in Utterson were unaffected.
Litschko said Lakeland had a one-hour outage in the morning and a 5.5-hour outage in the evening.
Litschko said Lakeland “monitored the situation internally, communicated updates to our customers and worked with the town that opened a warming centre at town hall” — something that Gravenhurst failed to do several customers complained to MuskokaTODAY.com.
In a taped message (here below) sent out Monday to customers, Litschko said he is working with Hydro One to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Tiziana Baccega Rosa, senior media relations advisor with Hydro One says the outages began at “8:37 a.m.”
“Crews worked as quickly and as safely as possible through the extreme cold to create a by-pass at our Bracebridge Transmission Station in order to reroute power to customers and make the required repairs on the distribution lines.
So why was power restored at first by noon Saturday, before then going off in the evening again?
“This was due on the ongoing attempts to reroute power to customers,” said Baccega Rosa. “Ultimately crews had to create a bypass in order to restore power. Our crews and operators tried various ways to restore power.
“The majority of customers were restored by midnight, however approximately 400 Hydro One customers remained without power until 10 p.m.”
She said that on Sunday “crews used a helicopter and snowmobiles to repair the cross arm and the pole that were located in a hard to reach, off-road location.”
Elexicon tell MuskokaTODAY.com “the outage was caused by a problem with Hydro One’s transmission system that resulted in a loss of supply from Hydro One to our customers.”
Kimberly Brathwaite, Elexicon’s brand and public relations advisor, said it “started at approximately 8:37 a.m. Saturday.
But power was restored in part of Gravenhurst just after 11 a.m. — then went off again at 5 p.m.
She said “the majority of customers restored by midnight,” and that “the final 85 customers’ power was restored by 7 a.m. Sunday.”
Though some customers on social media reported still being without power until almost noon.
Brathwaite said Elexicon crews and teams “maintained close contact with Hydro One, the Town of Gravenhurst and customers throughout the duration of the outage. Investigation of the outage revealed a broken switch and cross arm that resulted in a downed line that affected supply at Hydro One’s Bracebridge Transmission Station.”
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