(submitted photo/Broad Leaf Media)

By paNOW Staff

Power outage

Lightning storm leads to power outage in Central Sask.

Jul 23, 2020 | 12:35 PM

A lightning storm over sections of central and northern Sask.Wednesday night, was responsible for many families choosing to head to bed early, or at least finding some creative ways to pass the time in the dark.

According to SaskPower large parts of Christopher Lake, Emma Lake and Little Red River were without power until early Thursday morning. The Candle Lake and Meath Park areas were also impacted by the outage. SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry said generally when there is an outage like this, weather is the main culprit.

“It looks like it was a result of lighting in the area, so there was damage to the transmission lines,” he said.

Transmission lines are responsible for moving electricity to sub stations which feed into distribution lines which then deliver electricity to customers.

Power was originally restored around 4 a.m., however some areas later lost power for a second time which forced crews to make further repairs.

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“At this point it looks like the power is back on for everyone except Neis Beach,” Cherry said.

Cherry was not able to provide specific numbers in terms of how many people were affected by the outage. He added the remaining customers were expected to have their power back up by 5 p.m.

Generators were going

Karen Mohr, the Village Administrator at Albertville, told paNOW social media was buzzing.

“The one comment made to Facebook was about one of the residents trying to get to sleep with the hum of generators going in the village,” she said.

Fortunately, Mohr’s power was restored overnight, and she told paNOW when she awoke around 2 a.m. she worked frantically to reset all the alarm clocks.

Chey Waditaka and her partner at Wahpeton Dakota First Nation played Scrabble by candlelight to pass the time. She said the light show was very distracting.

“There was lightning all around us. I was worried there was going to be a fire because it was so dry and humid last night,” she said.

There have been no reports of any damage. By 11:25 a.m. Sask Power announced all power was restored.

—

panews@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @princealbertnow