Windstorm causes accident, outages

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Ken Gigliotti / Winnipeg Free Press A tree fell on a truck on Waterloo Street.

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Ken Gigliotti / Winnipeg Free Press Ironworkers at Investors Group Field work in calmer skies Tuesday morning. Monday night�s winds toppled a small brick wall at the stadium, but it was repaired Tuesday.

Hydro crews scrambled Tuesday morning to repair downed and branch-strewn power lines after winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour blasted through southern Manitoba on Monday night.

The most severely affected areas were in St. Ambrose, northeast of Portage la Prairie, where about 135 homes were without power for almost 24 hours, and the communities of Lorette and éle des Ch�nes, east of Winnipeg, where about 200 Manitoba Hydro customers were without power Tuesday morning, although it was restored Tuesday afternoon.

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Anthonie Koop said the power went out in the St. Ambrose area after wind-fanned flames from grass fires in the area set nine hydro poles ablaze around 9 p.m.

Because of the marshy terrain, hydro crews couldn't get in to repair the damage before dark, so they had to wait until daylight this morning. Power to St. Ambrose was finally restored at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Koop said a wide swath of southern Manitoba was hit with power outages during last night's storm, which blew through between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.

"Right across southern Manitoba, our crews were busy dealing with outages, from Dauphin and Ste. Rose du Lac south to Carman and Morden and as far east as Steinbach and Beausejour."

He said in some cases, lines were downed. In other cases, branches blew onto the lines, causing the power to automatically shut off until either the wind blew the branches off or hydro crews could remove them. If the line isn't broken, power is automatically restored.

Environment Canada meteorologist Mike McDonald said the high winds swept in behind a cold front that moved through the Red River Valley around 7 p.m. Monday.

Most of the region was hit with winds gusting from 80 to 100 km/h. The highest gusts were reported in Sperling, east of Carman, where the wind was clocked at 101 km/h.

McDonald said there were also reports of winds gusting to 91 km/h in Carman and Starbuck and 92 km/h in Elm Creek. In Winnipeg, the winds got as high as 85 km/h.

The winds in Winnipeg were strong enough to topple a small brick wall at Investors Group Field, which is under construction at the University of Manitoba.

Mike Clynes, project director at Stuart Olson Dominion, said crews repaired the structure by noon, and it will not have a major impact on the project.

Earlier this month, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers confirmed the team will play at least five games in the old Canad Inns Stadium after construction delays at Investors Group Field pushed the opening date back.

The collapse of a small wall will not impact the team's move into the new facility in September.

"While this may affect the timing of moving our business side into the new stadium due to repairs to the building, this will not set us back in our plan to open Sept. 21 or, with best circumstances, Sept. 9," said Garth Buchko, the team's president and CEO.

McDonald, of Environment Canada, said Monday's storm brought little rain to the region -- only two or three millimetres -- because the air mass was so dry. Relative humidity has been as low as 10 to 20 per cent the last couple of days in southern Manitoba, he said.

The dry air and high winds have stirred up forest fires in the RM of Piney this week.

"That's the prime recipe for wildfires, when you have very strong winds and very dry air."

-- with files from Jen Skerritt

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Goose turns out lights

A wayward goose caused a major power outage in south Winnipeg on Tuesday morning, the day after a heavy windstorm knocked down trees across the city.

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Anthonie Koop said about 3,000 customers in south St. Boniface, St. Vital and Fort Garry and traffic lights on south Pembina Highway and Bishop Grandin Boulevard were affected by the early-morning outage, which was caused by a goose flying into a transmission line.

Power was restored and the traffic lights were back on by around 9 a.m.

It appears the goose was trying to take off west of Pembina Highway near French Street and got tangled up in some hydro lines, Koop said. That caused an arc and a power surge, which damaged equipment on the line and knocked out the power.

It took a while for Hydro crews to find the cause of the outage, Koop said, but once they did, it was fairly easy to repair the equipment.

The goose didn't survive the mishap.

Koop said geese flying into power lines isn't as rare as one might think.

"They've had a few of these contacts this year already."

However, in most cases, the bird only makes brief contact with the line.

The power shuts off for a second or two and then automatically comes back on once the bird is clear of the line, Koop said.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 16, 2012 $sourceSection0