Thousands of Winnipeggers spent hours huddled in the dark Wednesday, due to a power outage.
Slushy snow and icy drizzle coated hydro lines and allowed electricity to jump out and make contact with a wood hydro pole that blew out power across a wide swath of north Winnipeg.
And it also trapped senior citizen Rose Sawka in an elevator for hours.
"I had a little ride and then all of a sudden, nothing,” she said.
It seems that around the same time as she was stepping into the elevator a hydro pole caught fire at McPhillips and Kingsbury, shorting out power to 9,000 customers in the area.
It plunged homes businesses Rose's elevator into darkness.
"Pitch black. Not a light (anywhere),” she said.
The lights may not have worked, but her voice still did.
And she used it to call out for help to her husband, who'd come to the elevator to see if she was OK.
"I hollered, ‘Rose, are you there?’ She said, ‘Yes! I'm stuck,’” said Mike Rogers, her husband.
He was a little stuck too.
He wanted to call for help, but he had some difficulty getting Rose's iPhone to work.
Eventually, though, he got through.
The fire department arrived and rescued the grandmother who'd been sitting in the dark for more than three hours.
Asked if she was concerned about getting back in that elevator, Rose simply said:
"No, I'm not afraid. Anyway, I have no choice,” she said, laughing.
“I can go down stairs, but I can’t come up.”
