YORKTON Many southern Saskatchewan residents woke up last Friday to a landscape covered in ice. But even after the ice has melted away, the impacts of the storm remain. Friday’s ice storm blanketed areas from the eastern end of Regina to the Yorkton, Melville and Canora region. Scott McGregor, spokesperson for SaskPower, said about 57,000 customers were impacted. Customers found themselves without power for anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, but some in Melville are still in the dark. According to mayor Walter Streelasky, about 60 residents were still without power as of Tuesday morning. SaskPower said the outages in Melville are due to damage from the storm, whether it be a torn down line or the line connection to the home.
By Ryan Young
May 25, 2021 | 6:16 PM
SaskPower has a total of how many customers were affected by last week’s ice storm that hit east and southeastern Saskatchewan.
Spokesman Scott McGregor says 56,987 customers were affected by the storm, and a majority of them have their power back.
However, if anyone still doesn’t have power, they’re advised to call the Outage Centre at 310-2220 or go online to saskpower.com/reportoutage.
McGregor says the situation is much more manageable than it was two days ago.
He explained at the height of the outage, 48 SaskPower employees and 6 Vegetation Management crews were dispatched to the Melville area, one of the hardest hit areas, helping restore power and clear downed tree branches.
The power is back on in eastern Saskatchewan.
In a news release late Saturday night, SaskPower reported that workers had fixed most of the primary lines in the affected areas.
However, about 620 customers were still without power overnight.
Early Sunday afternoon, the crown corporation updated its outage map, showing no unplanned outages in the province.
12:42 PM: Crews have now restored power to the majority of customers impacted by outages in the South & East of the province.Crews are now working on smaller area & individual customer outages and issues. For any further updates or information #skoutage 1/2
Widespread outages were caused across many areas of the east, including Yorkton and Melville, when an ice storm hit late Thursday night and early Friday morning. Freezing rain caused many trees to fall to the ground, which then broke power lines.
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