Hydro workers were kept busy on Easter Sunday dealing with five electrical poles that caught fire and left close to 9,000 customers in the dark.
Manitoba Hydro said melting snow mixed with the dirt and grime of spring creating a short circuit that caused two poles on Aberdeen Avenue and McPhillips Street to catch fire around 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning.
Cindy Balyk had planned a big Easter dinner for her family. Before she got out of bed, however, the power had gone out.
“It was around 2:00(a.m.). We got up, it was so cold and we didn't know what the heck was going on and then we looked outside and it was a blackout,” she said.
It wasn't just damage to the power lines on Aberdeen that caused outages over the Easter weekend. Manitoba Hydro says there were five poles in four different parts of the city that caught fire early Sunday morning.
Hydro spokesperson Anthonie Koop said, while it's not uncommon for equipment to malfunction or catch fire in the spring, it's extremely unusual for five poles to go up in flames within an hour of each other.
“I think it's just the convergence of conditions. You know the wet snow, probably a bit of fog, and then this dirt that we have on our equipment all conspiring if you will to create these situations,” he said.
Koop said crews had to prioritize their work because they couldn't fix the five damaged poles at once. That meant some customers had their power back within two hours, while others, like Balak, waited more than 12.
Balak was able to cook her Easter feast, but because the electricity didn't come back until 1:00 p.m., her guests had to settle for donuts for dessert instead of banana cream pies.
