First Nation’s power-outage misery ‘frozen like a rock’

An army of plumbers, engineers and members of the Canadian Armed Forces are continuing to assess damages after a lengthy power outage at Pimicikamak Cree Nation froze water and sewage pipes.

Chief David Monias said it is going to take months to repair damage to homes and years to install new water and sewage treatment plants and systems.

“They have frozen pipes — the sewage plant is completely frozen,” Monias said Wednesday. “The raw sewage has frozen like rock, it is as hard as rock. There is enough (methane) gas in there that we can’t even enter the building. So they are trying to figure out a way how to air out that building so that they can assess the sewage problem.”

Monias said the experts are going to try to get the water and sewage systems up and running while the community works with government on a longer term solution. He said the plants will eventually need to be decommissioned.

“You can’t even find parts for them,” the chief said. “They are trying to figure out a way how to get them operational until we get a new system.”

Three additional Armed Forces members arrived Wednesday in Pimicikamak, joining seven others who arrived Monday, The Canadian Press reported.

A broken hydro transmission line cut power for four days to the community, located more than 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

One of the community’s water treatment plants has been out of service for more than two weeks and thousands of the First Nation’s 7,000 residents were forced to leave.

A temporary camp has been set up to accommodate the plumbers and other workers needed to repair the damage.

Monias said they are also assessing damage to homes.

“We examined 40 homes yesterday and we found 80 per cent of the houses had broken pipes or were damaged due to flooding,” Monias said.

“There was flooding in the crawl spaces and on the floors.”

Monias said the damage at Pimicikamak wouldn’t have been as bad if Manitoba Hydro had moved its power lines closer to the highway years ago.

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“If we could have got to it in a few hours, and not days, we could still have been at home,” he said.

“Yes, we would have had a broken system, but we were negotiating to get it replaced anyway. A -30 C winter going up to -45 with the wind chill — everything freezes in a matter of minutes. And if it is a deep freeze for six days, everything freezes. Wires, water, food and everything is spoiled.

“It is just a sad state of affairs.”

Manitoba Hydro said last week a power line along the road would double its length but wouldn’t guarantee outages longer than two days would cease.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press’s city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin.

Every piece of reporting Kevin 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.