UPDATED: The power is back on at a North End retirement home after nearly two days with no electricity or air conditioning.
The manager said he received word Wednesday night from the facility’s caretaker around 7:30 p.m. that power had been restored at St. Josaphat Selo-Villa.
EARLIER: With temperatures in the 30s, nobody wants to be caught in a situation without air conditioning let alone power, but that is the case for a group of seniors in the North End.
St. Josaphat Selo-Villa has been without power since 8 p.m. on Monday night after water flooded the basement of the complex, damaging electrical components.
“As a precaution we had to have Hydro turn the power off to avoid any catastrophic failure that might jeopardize the integrity of our electrical system in our basement,” said George Ehr, property manager at St. Josaphat Selo-Villa.
Residents are without the necessary power needed to cook food and are growing increasingly frustrated with how the situation is being handled.
“I don't like seeing people in this situation, I don't like being in this situation,” said Valerie Larocque, a resident at St. Josaphat Selo-Villa.
The property management company said they’re doing their due diligence to ensure everything is up and operating smoothly.
“We had all the water removed from the basement, we had crews working all Monday night,” said Ehr.
“Crews went in and evaluated to see if any damage might have been caused to the power systems. We found a couple of electrical components had been compromised.”
According to Manitoba Hydro spokesperson in a situation like this where the owner owns the electrical components, the onus is on them to repair and ensure electrical stability before they can turn the power back on.
“The city inspector said that we should have an electrical engineer come and look at the entire system,” said Ehr.
“We tried to get an electrical engineer to come in all afternoon, but we weren’t able to find one who could come down to the site.”
Ehr said an electrical engineer is expected to be there tomorrow, but could not confirm if power would be back on tomorrow.
Many of the residents are concerned by the food in their fridges and freezers, as they don’t have ability to cook or make sure it doesn’t spoil.
“A lot of people haven’t eaten because there hasn’t been anything. We’re all scared to open our fridges, our freezers because our food is going to spoil,” said Larocque.
“We’re all living on limited incomes, we don’t want our food to spoil.”
Ehr said a plan will be instituted to allow residents to recoup what may have been wasted.
“We have a program in place where we will be going to each of the tenants and seeing what they’ve lost and compensating them for that.”
Ehr said after the electrical engineer evaluates the system everything could be back and running.
“If it does last into the afternoon, we will then be making alternatives to try to keep everyone at ease.” said Ehr.
