(File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Lights Out

Weather knocks out power in communities around P.A.

Jul 13, 2020 | 5:35 PM

A number of communities around Prince Albert were without power on Monday.

Some areas south of the city including Saint Louis, Domremy and Yellow Creek lost power for six hours. Scott McGregor, media relations consultant with SaskPower said the outage was caused by lightning damaging a regulator.

“Power was restored around 1 p.m. this afternoon, it went off, went back on a couple times,” he said.

McGregor said it is not uncommon for lightning to knock out power during this time of year as they have large equipment in locations such as fields. He was not able to say how many customers were affected by the outage.

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Meanwhile customers were without power in the Rural Municipality of Paddockwood and Village of Meath Park area after five power poles were knocked down.

“That one was actually caused by some really powerful weather that went by, a combination of wind and excessive rain,” he said.

McGregor said crews were able to restore power late this afternoon by rerouting. According to McGregor around 1,300 people were affected by the outage. He added fixing damaged poles can take some time.

“Last update I have seen here is, that yes our crews are still working to fix those poles,” he said.

During this time of year McGregor said poles going down is not as common as seeing equipment hit by lighting but does happen. He said they tend to see damage to poles when there are strong winds coupled with wet conditions.

“With really strong winds and with ground being saturated with water, it makes the ground easier to be pushed around, with a strong enough wind it does damage some of our equipment,” he said.

McGregor said they wish to remind people who come across damaged power lines or equipment to remain a safe distance away and call SaskPower as soon as possible.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn