YEC worker error cut power to 14,000
Employee error caused the grid that serves the southern Yukon to suddenly switch off Wednesday afternoon, leaving approximately 14,000 customers without power.
Photo by Vince Fedorof
NO POWER, NO LIGHTS – Motorists using Second Avenue were guided by hand directions after Wednesday afternoon’s massive power failure began. Southbound traffic was sometimes backed up from Main Street clear down to Jarvis Street.
Employee error caused the grid that serves the southern Yukon to suddenly switch off Wednesday afternoon, leaving approximately 14,000 customers without power.
Yukon Energy employees were upgrading the protection system when they accidentally caused the entire Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro grid to shut down at 1:07 p.m.
Janet Patterson, Yukon Energy’s communications officer, couldn’t say exactly what happened during the upgrade, but stated, “Something happened that shouldn’t have happened and that caused the generation loss.”
The lengthy failure forced some businesses to close. Traffic was backed up for several blocks along Second Avenue because most traffic signals along the artery weren’t working.
All of the southern Yukon as far as Pelly Crossing was affected. Every resident had his or her power restored by 2:30 p.m.
Some communities, such as Pelly Crossing, Ross River and Carmacks, have backup diesel generators, and their power should have switched back on almost immediately after the outage struck, said Patterson.
However, Whitehorse and other areas do not have backup generators, and some communities were in the dark for nearly an hour and a half.
After 47 minutes without electricity, Riverdale was the first to have its power restored, followed by downtown Whitehorse after 49 minutes.
The Minto and Faro mines were the last to have their juice turned back on.
The outage follows a series of problems with the Yukon’s telecommunication services.
Internet, Bell Mobility and long-distance telephone service to the south were congested for nearly 12 hours on Tuesday, and customers experienced similar disruptions on Aug. 9 and 10.
All three incidences were caused by cut fibre optic cables in northern Alberta.
Rick Karp, president of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce, said he’s received a continuous stream of complaints from local business owners worried about the impact the frequent outages and disruptions have on their revenue.
“They are not happy, not happy,” he said. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
Karp said summer is the business community’s “bread and butter time,” when tourism flourishes. Constant difficulties with power outages or disruptions to Internet or phone service make doing business a challenge, he added.
Companies that focus on tourism, such as outfitters, wilderness tourism and hotels, rely on the Internet for their bookings and advertisement, Karp pointed out. Lapses in service can result in lost clients.
Most people pay for goods and services with their credit or debit cards. Since debit machines rely on the Internet to process the transactions, restaurants and retail shops really feel the pinch when the Internet is slow or not working at all, said Karp.
“We need to have the infrastructure working in order for this to continue because it’s a very fickle marketplace out there,” he said. “We need consistency; we need reliability.”
anonymous
Aug 19, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Certain local business owners need to learn how to act during a power outage. Being rude to your customers isn’t the way to handle it. They spend money in your store. Just because you own a store doesn’t mean you can be rude snd obnoxious to your customers. When customers have a good experience very few people (unfortunately) hear about it. When a customer has a bad experience ten people hear about it. Think about it.