‘See the conditions first-hand’: contingent of leaders set for Pimicikamak visit Wednesday

Indigenous leaders, federal officials and Premier Wab Kinew are scheduled to visit a northern Manitoba First Nation Wednesday to see the aftermath of a days-long power outage.

Pimicikamak Cree Nation Chief David Monias said he hopes the meeting produces an action plan to repair homes that sustained water damage, and long-term measures to avoid repeat situations.

“Hopefully, the leaders can listen to us and see the conditions first-hand — to look at the housing damage, the water and sewer vulnerabilities, infrastructure gaps and ongoing impact of the emergency on families in our community,” he told the Free Press.

Monias said Pimicikamak is in need of plumbers, electricians and carpenters while it continues to assess the full scale of the incident. More than 200 of Pimicikamak’s roughly 1,300 homes sustained damage, he said.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak and federal Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand are also scheduled to visit Pimicikamak. They will be joined by Manitoba First Nations leaders and officials from Indigenous Services Canada.

The federal department has said it will provide funding to repair damaged infrastructure.

The community of about 7,000 people lost power late Dec. 28 when a transmission line broke in a remote area north of Pimicikamak. Power was restored in phases after Manitoba Hydro fixed the line Thursday. Electricity was fully restored Friday afternoon, about 110 hours after the outage started.

The temperature dropped below -30 C during that time. Monias said water lines and tanks, as well as service lines and sewage systems froze. Pipes burst inside some homes, causing water to leak into basements and crawl spaces.

Pimicikamak declared a state of emergency and a public health emergency before power was restored.

About 4,000 residents left the community, some 750 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Evacuees who cannot return home are staying in Winnipeg, Thompson and other places.

“I feel for them, but I just can’t send them home to a water-damaged house or leaking,” Monias said. “I don’t want to have to re-evacuate them if it’s unlivable.”

Pimicikamak’s water treatment plant was operating Monday, following a lack of potable water. Staff were trying to seal leaks.

“It’s what we call MacGyvering. You put duct tape onto the pipes so it’s not leaking,” Monias said, referring to the TV show MacGyver. “(The plant) is not in good shape, but it’s producing water.”

Pimicikamak and neighbouring Cross Lake went through evacuations during this year’s wildfire season.

Mayor Bob Smith said about 27 buildings, mostly homes, in the incorporated community of Cross Lake flooded after pipes burst. Some owners or occupants were away for the holidays.

Backup generators powered Cross Lake’s water and sewer systems. Smith said a mass evacuation would have occurred if the systems failed.

“That’s why our concentration was really on keeping that infrastructure up and running,” he said.

Cross Lake has a population of about 500.

Smith said the focus has shifted to helping residents who’ve been displaced by water damage to their homes. He is hoping the province offers disaster financial assistance.

“A lot of people here don’t carry home insurance, so that’s not going to be an option,” Smith said. “One of the things we want to avoid is having standing water in crawl spaces for too long. Then you start developing mould situations and things like that.”

He expects lessons to be learned from the outage.

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“We’re a resilient people up here. We grew up in the North, so we know how to survive here,” he said. “When you get dependent on having electricity — a lot of people don’t have wood stoves anymore — it really makes you think to avoid this happening again. We have to be prepared and proactive and making sure we can handle it.”

Indigenous Services Canada is helping Pimicikamak to, among other things, purchase plumbing supplies and bring in tradespeople to carry out repairs, a spokesperson said.

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Scott Powell said there have been no issues with the electricity supply since it was restored Friday.

The Crown corporation 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, Powell said.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.