L’Isle-aux-Allumettes mayor Corey Spence said that on Thursday (Dec. 4) the island was hit by a series of outages that lasted, on and off, for most of the day.

“It was a major one, so it seems that Allumette Island east was initially out from around 8 a.m. and Hydro-Québec, completely for the day, was trying to fix it remotely by resetting their breakers,” he said. “In doing that, it caused throughout the day, on and off, on and off.”

Spence said that based on the information he received, the outages also impacted the Pontiac Ouest region, including Sheenboro, Chichester, Waltham and parts of Mansfield-et-Pontefract.

He said municipal officials had met with Hydro-Quebec in September for an update on its work to mitigate the outages in the area, which has struggled for years with an unreliable grid.

Part of the issue stems from the odd set-up the area has, as the area’s electrical grid is synchronized with Ontario, due to its distance from the closest substation in Quebec, located in Bryson. Hydro-Québec has announced a new substation for the Mansfield area, scheduled to be completed by the early 2030s, to help address the problem.

Hydro-Québec community relations agent Simon Desjardins, in an email response to THE EQUITY, gave an explanation for the outage.

“Two events occurred yesterday in the Isle-aux-Allumettes area to explain the outage,” he wrote in French. “First, there was an equipment failure when two pieces of equipment on two intersecting poles touched, causing several brief interruptions.”

He added that in addition, a pole had been “severed, likely due to an impact”, and a crew was assigned to replace it, which took part of the day.

Spence said that he was frustrated by the level of communication, and said he would have liked to see a quicker response on the ground, especially during a cold time of year.

“You can imagine yesterday, power’s been flickering on and off all day, and things didn’t really happen until late in the day, late in the afternoon,” he said. “At some point in time, if your remote switch ain’t working, I would say after the third time, you better send someone out to investigate.”

He said he would be following up with Desjardins and his superiors with his concerns about the issue.

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