Hydro highlights 2022 power outages

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/12/2022 (1204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What do a cat, a snowstorm and a backyard fire have in common?

They’re all elements of Manitoba Hydro’s top five notable outages of 2022.

On Dec. 28, the Crown corporation posted a video roundup of its wackiest, weirdest and most widespread power outages just before the new year.

The list kicks off with a timid cat stranded on a hydro pole in Peguis First Nation.

James Favel, who recorded video footage of the rescue, remembers the event fondly. In early May, Favel, who then ran the First Nations Community Response Corp., was guiding a flood response team in Peguis, some 180 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

“One of the guys came over and said, ‘Hey, do you want to go for a ride… We’re going to go rescue a cat,’” Favel said. “I kind of thought he was joking at first.”

Standing in flood waters, the team helped a Hydro worker safely climb the pole, where he retrieved the frightened cat and carried it down in a tool bag.

For Favel, the most rewarding part of the rescue was witnessing the reaction from the pet’s young owner.

“She was standing on the porch of the house that was surrounded by a metre of water. She was just in tears, so happy to receive the animal,” Favel said. “It was a really fantastic experience.”

The next three events on the Hydro list featured an arcing at its Richer station, a spring snowstorm that left thousands without power, and a wildfire outside Pukatawagan that resulted in three months of power outages.

How did they make the cut?

“It was a combination of the ones that affected the most people or the longest or were notable in some way,” said Riley McDonald, a media relations officer for Manitoba Hydro. “Obviously, the cat one was quite cute, (but) it didn’t affect many customers.”

On the other end of the spectrum, the April snowstorm resulted in 1,005 outages, impacting 15,000 customers in Parkland West and parts of south central Manitoba.

Finally, a natural gas fire ignited in a Portage la Prairie man’s yard Oct. 21 was listed at No. 1. It was sparked by a man driving metal posts into the ground along his driveway.

One lesson, above all, can be learned from that incident, Hydro said: click or call before you dig.

“A shocking number of people don’t… and when they do, they don’t follow the instructions properly,” McDonald said. “That could’ve been a lot worse, so that had to make the list as well, because this stuff is no joke.”

As a media relations officer, McDonald views social media as an invaluable tool for Hydro’s interactions with the public. Whether it be an outage, a safety tip or an occasional meme, customers flock to its Twitter feeds and Facebook homepage to receive Hydro updates.

“Nobody likes to be left in dark, literally or figuratively,” McDonald said.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca