The Flanagan Fire has spread and is less than 5km away from the Island Falls power station. (Photo Credit: Google Maps.)

By Nick Nielsen

Flanigan fire is within 5km

Island Falls power station expected to stay operational despite encroaching wildfire

Aug 15, 2024 | 5:00 PM

With the edge of a wildfire within five kilometres of the Island Falls Hydroelectric Power Station, residents in the area of Sandy Bay and towards the Manitoba border will not have to worry about losing their electricity long term. Right now the power station is operating with only their essential staff, but it is not expected at the moment for the power station to shut down entirely.

The fire has spread over 391 hectares of space around the Lake Flanagan area. SaskPower Spokesperson Scott McGregor said that they are closely monitoring the situation with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Association (SPSA) if they will need to evacuate the rest of their employees keeping the station running, but that isn’t a concern for them at this time.

“It’s very, very unlikely that any operations at Island Falls will be impacted and the plan is to keep operating Island Falls normally. We’ve been running fire suppression sprinklers at the plant since last week, which has been just saturating the surrounding area and the rooftops of the buildings. It’s quite wet around the facility itself.”

One of the reasons SaskPower is expecting the Island Falls station to stay operational despite the nearby fire is because of its location. Island Falls is a Hydroelectric plant that is located on the water of the Churchill River and is surrounded by water on the north and west sides, so even if the fire continues to close in they should be ready for it.

“It certainly helps the fact that the hydro station is essentially a concrete building on an island surrounded by water on two of the four sides. That said, there are hot embers coming off the fire, they travel sometimes kilometers in distance, so it’s really important that that we keep the area saturated and protect the buildings that might have sensitive equipment inside of it like a powerhouse, make sure the roof is good and saturated to prevent any embers from causing your problem.”

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If the Flanagan fire does continue to grow and the power plant does need to be shut down, customers served by the Island Falls station will not be without power for long. McGregor said that SaskPower already has plans in place to reroute power from stations from both the north and south sides of the province.

“As our planning has gone and what we’ve been able to determine with our generating capacity that we’re able to route to the customers that island Falls serves, there shouldn’t be any sort of prolonged outages. We have the ability to switch and route power from other parts of the province to places that need it.”

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com