Power has been restored to Fort Smith residents after an outage that lasted approximately seven hours for some customers.
The first of the day’s outages took place just after 1pm. The NWT Power Corporation said most residents had power back by 7:30pm but some had to wait until shortly after 8:15pm.
Earlier, the town opened an emergency warming shelter as a series of outages dragged into the evening. Fort Smith had an air temperature of -25C on Friday and a wind chill of -35.
Anyone in the town still without power is instructed to call 1-855-575-6872.
“Although power supply is currently stable, there is only a limited amount of extra capacity available. To help support continued stability of the electricity system, customers are asked to reduce their power consumption as much as they can over the weekend,” the power corporation stated at 9pm on Friday.
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“Unplug appliances that are not in use and, if possible, avoid energy-intensive activities such as laundry.”
Power outages are a fact of life in the NWT, where no territorial grid exists and communities have limited backup when something goes wrong.
However, Friday’s Fort Smith outages lasted an unusually long time on a typically frigid January day in the North.
The first outage lasted until around 3pm for most customers, though some were still without power past that point.
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Just before 4:30pm, another outage began. Stores across the town closed for the day rather than try to ride out multiple blackouts.
The cause of the problem, or problems, was not immediately apparent.
“Nothing more northern than barbecuing some burgers in -36C with windchill for supper,” Fort Smith resident Kennedy Weber wrote online in the early evening as residents tried to figure out meals and heating.
Another resident, Gladys Evans Rehm, said she went to her brother’s house to take advantage of his wood stove for heating stew. “Lots of people out driving just to keep warm,” Rehm wrote.
Friday’s blackouts were the latest in a series endured by Fort Smith this winter. (A brief outage also struck parts of Yellowknife on the same afternoon.)
Fort Smith has been on diesel power since May 2023 because of renovation work to the Taltson hydro plant – the town’s usual power source – that is now running more than a year behind schedule.
