Anything but sweet: outage spoils dozens of litres of parlour’s ice cream

The owner of an ice cream shop was licking her wounds Thursday after dozens of litres of icy treats melted away, causing profits to go down the drain.

Patty Mikos, the longtime co-owner of Dairy Delight on St. Anne’s Road, arrived at work to find 10 tubs of 11.4 litres of hard ice cream melting inside a freezer that had been off for hours because of a hydro outage.

The ice cream was tossed into a garbage bin with other perishable food products, including hamburger.

“We had to throw out all the meat — about 50 pounds today,” Mikos said. “You don’t want to risk it when it comes to meat.”

It’s the third time this year she’s been forced to throw out ice cream and meat at her store, which she owns with her brother, at 467 St. Anne’s Rd.

“I’m getting used to it. Before this year, there had been only one outage in 26 years, and (Manitoba) Hydro compensated me then. They don’t do that anymore.

“But it’s not just Dairy Delight — it’s the entire street.”

Winnipeg Police Service Const. Claude Chancy said the outage was caused by a pickup truck colliding with a hydro pole on the 300 block of St. Anne’s on Wednesday at about 11:30 p.m.

“The vehicle was rendered inoperable and hydro lines were affected. Both directions of traffic were closed to traffic,” Chancy said.

Police said the driver of the vehicle fled and the investigation is ongoing.

He said auxiliary cadets were on the scene until repairs were made Thursday afternoon.

Hydro spokesman Peter Chura said the outage left about 1,900 customers in the dark for about 15 hours in the Lavallee, St. George and Southdale areas.

“That pole is the connection point for several circuits serving a wide area,” Chura said.

“So it was a complex repair that required time to assess, assemble the necessary crew and equipment, and perform the work safely.”

Chura said power was restored at about 2:48 p.m.

”In a power outage such as that, with damage caused beyond our control, we can’t unfortunately compensate customers for spoiled food,” he said. “Thank you to all who were affected for their patience.”

Mikos said she couldn’t remember how long the first outage was this year, which also resulted in food having to be chucked out, but the second one was for 22 hours and also broke her soft ice cream machine.

She said she was fortunate this outage came late in the season.

“If this was July, the bins would have been stacked to the top of the freezer.”

While Mikos said she won’t have any hard ice cream Friday — that delivery doesn’t come until next week — she will have soft ice cream and burgers to serve.

“Bad things come in threes so I hope that means it doesn’t go out a fourth time.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca