MD OF BIGHORN – Power has been restored in Dead Man’s Flats following a hamlet-wide outage caused by damage to a power line.
The MD of Bighorn confirmed the downed power line was caused by demolition work at the Bighorn Inn, adjacent to the site of the incident.
“We just know it’s a construction vehicle that hit the power line and caused it, but we don’t know in what manner,” said MD of Bighorn communications coordinator Thomas Judek.
The MD says it’s still investigating the cause of a fire that also occurred near the site of the fallen power line. An outbuilding near the inn, used for storage, caught fire around the same time as the power outage.
Fire crews from Canmore and Exshaw were called to the scene, along with RCMP, and EMS, which was on standby. No injuries were reported.
FortisAlberta was also on site and has since fixed the power outage, erecting new utility infrastructure to tie into standing power.
Peter Brodsky, manager of public affairs for FortisAlberta, said the incident took down three power poles, which have since been replaced.
“We were alerted to the outage, which affected about 319 customers in the area, most of them in that Dead Man’s Flats immediate area,” he said.
“What occurred is there was apparently a line contact due to the construction work and that inadvertently took down some of our facilities that caused that outage.”
The power company’s work was anticipated to be complete by 6 p.m. yesterday, but Brodksy confirmed power came back online just before 8 p.m. The outage occurred around noon.
The MD did not share the name of the demolition company and could not confirm if demolition work on the inn was proceeding today (Aug. 9), if deemed safe to do so.
The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. The position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.
