After nearly two full days without electricity, power was restored to Sturgeon Landing at 6:03 p.m. Tuesday, ending a 45-hour outage that left residents hauling water, melting snow, and relying on wood stoves for heat.
Amanda Sinclair, a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, said the storm and blackout pushed the remote community to its limits.
“It was 45 and a half hours with no power,” Sinclair said on Wednesday. “The power came back on last night, but four other communities we’re connected to are still off.”
The outage followed a Thanksgiving weekend blizzard that downed trees and power lines across northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Sinclair said repair crews told her the terrain remained rough, with fallen trees still covering parts of the route serviced by Manitoba Hydro.
Generators and bottled water arrived late Tuesday night at the home of the community councillor for distribution, Sinclair said, but no emergency shelters were established during the blackout.
A portable generator used by residents in Sturgeon Landing after a Thanksgiving weekend storm knocked out power for nearly two days.
“We’ve done this before,” she said. “Last time it was off for four or five days, and no one came to help, so we just did it ourselves.”
Sinclair’s uncle, who died on Thanksgiving Day, collapsed while trying to deliver water to his daughter.
“He fell on his way trying to get his daughter some water, and my cousin tried CPR before the ambulance came,” she said. “The roads were snowed in, and the grader didn’t come until later. They had to make their own trail for the RCMP and coroner.”
Temperatures dropped to -40 with the wind chill during the worst of the outage.
“It’s hard; you wouldn’t understand unless you were here,” Sinclair said. “They keep giving us the runaround between SaskPower and Manitoba Hydro. We’re just asking people to keep our small community in their prayers.”
While Sturgeon Landing’s lights are finally back on, four neighbouring communities remain without power, and fallen trees continue to obstruct roads and lines in the area.
