A serious power outage over the weekend affected hundreds of households across the municipalities of L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Chichester, Sheenboro and Waltham, as temperatures dipped as low as -35 celsius.

The power outage began around 1 a.m. on Saturday, with power being restored in places on an alternating basis across the region throughout Saturday and Sunday. Some homes in Sheenboro went over 30 hours straight without power, according to Intermin DG of Sheenboro Simon Tessier. Power wasn’t fully restored until 7 p.m., according to Hydro Quebec.

The power outage caused many to go without heat and was accompanied by a breakdown in the area’s communication infrastructure. The backup batteries powering the phone lines went down seven hours into the power outage, according to Corey Spence, mayor of L’Isle-aux-Allumettes.

“The Upper Pontiac experienced a bit of a perfect storm this weekend in that the recent copper lines that were put in to make sure that the home phone lines were still working when the power went out suffered damage. The fiber optic equipment was also damaged,” Pontiac MNA André Fortin said. “So you had a number of people with simply no means of communication.”

“To add insult to injury, we do not have a cellular network over here. So there were times where it was quite nerve wracking, to say the least, to make sure that everybody was safe,” Spence said.

Wellness checks were performed by the Pontiac Ouest Fire Department, as well as the two municipal buildings on L’Isle-aux-Allumettes were opened to the public to give residents a place to go to warm up, eat and charge their devices.

As of now, THE EQUITY has not heard reports of any residents experiencing medical emergencies or property damage due to conditions.

Director General of L’Isle-aux-Allumette and Chichester, Alicia Jones, and other municipal staff were credited with organizing the response by Fortin, Tessier and Warden Jane Toller.

“I want to say that I’m quite proud of our citizens, and I’m very proud of our municipal workers and the volunteer fire department, who were crucial in getting the message out and checking up on all people to make sure everyone was safe. You know, these crises really pull a community together and it was quite heartwarming to see that happen,” said Spence.

The power outage was caused by equipment failure at the Waltham hydro station on the Black River, run by the private company Evolugen, according to various sources.

Hydro Québec stated that the power failure was caused by “an issue beyond their control”, which was provoked by a historic spike in energy usage.

“You have to understand about this particular weekend that it was very cold,” Anna Rozanova, communications and regions advisor at Hydro Québec said. “In very cool weather like that the use of electricity during peak periods put lots of pressure on the grid because so many of our clients heat their homes with electricity. So this past weekend, we reached a historical peak in terms of our consumption. We really beat the records in Quebec.”

Hydro Québec said the exact cause of the problem at the Waltham Power Station won’t be known for at least another week.

“My understanding is that there were two equipment failures at the Waltham generating station that caused part of their customers to not be able to have access to power,” Fortin said about his understanding of what the problem was.

On Sunday Hydro Québec and MRC Pontiac Warden Jane Toller, acting on a request from the public utility, urged residents in the Pontiac to reduce their own energy consumption as power needed to be diverted from the Evolugen generation station on the Coulouge River to the affected areas in the Upper Pontiac.

“We ensured that all the available resources required to restore electricity were mobilized,” Rozanova said. “While the restoring work at the Waltham power station was carried out we were able to restore power on an alternating basis, meaning that some customers could get the power back for some time and then other customers would get it for some other time. So we were talking roughly about 500 people at a time that would get their power back.”

Power was restored on a consistent basis to most homes by 7 p.m. on Sunday.

As of Monday, affected residents continued to be encouraged by Hyrdo Québec to minimize their energy consumption while the Waltham generating system was restored.

Leaders want solutions

Hydro Québec pledged to continue improving the hydro service area to avoid future incidents like this happening.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this particular situation that was beyond our control,” Rozanova said. “But I would like to assure you that we are really looking further into this issue and our goal is to continue building the quality of services in the Pontiac region. In recent years, we have significantly reinforced the power system. There was some work on vegetation control, and work designed to ensure this system is reliable throughout the year and we’re not stopping there. We will be in touch with our suppliers, municipal partners and of course the community to discuss the further steps.”

Despite that statement, this power outage comes as no surprise to locals used to the unreliability of the energy grid in the Upper Pontiac, with Fortin, Toller and Spence all expressing concern at the state of infrastructure in the area.

“It happened in May, it happened at Christmas, and now it has happened at the coldest time of the year. And I think that’s what makes this dangerous,” Toller said. “If we do not have sufficient hydroelectricity for our residents, something needs to be done immediately about this.”

“Residents who are not in the urban areas, a lot of them have generators because this has become the norm, unfortunately,” Spence said. “You know, we live in an area where the power goes out. Nobody trusts the utility anymore. So the generator industry is profiting quite well from it.”

Fortin said he is working towards setting up meetings with municipal leaders, Hydro Québec, tele-communications companies, and technicians to work towards implementing longer-term solutions.

“There are solutions. We just have to make sure that to use this opportunity to strike while the iron is hot and use everybody’s fear and anger for a positive resolution for the people at the Upper Pontiac,” Fortin said.

Toller brought up the prospect of holding public meetings where residents would be able to hear from and ask questions to leaders and the utility personnel themselves. She also encouraged residents to come and express themselves on the issue at the next public MRC on Wednesday, Feb. 15.

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