Severe weather in Baffin keeps Qulliq Energy crews scrambling

Last week’s high winds and rainy weather caused many weather-related incidents and outages in Nunavut, Ed Picco, the minister responsible for Nunavut’s Qulliq Power Corporation, told the legislature.

In Sanikiluaq, the extreme weather caught Qulliq’s safety officer off guard. She was stuck in a vehicle on the way to the power plant, and ended up spending the night sleeping on the floor at the airport, Picco said. The plant operator, Charlie Cookie, was stuck at the plant due to the weather.

“It was a good thing he was stuck there, Mr. Speaker, because he could look out the plant window and see a connector torn loose by the winds at over 100 km/h. Each time the torn lines slapped across one of the feeders, it caused about half the town to lose power. The operator sat by the window through the storm and he was there to re-close the feeder each time it tripped out,” Picco told the legislature.

In Grise Fiord, strong winds ripped electrical service connections away from some homes, and several houses lost power completely. In Iqaluit, wind caused two ends of a single feeder line to come into contact several times. Each contact resulted in a loud noise and “bright flashes in the sky,” Picco said.

“Line crews were sent out to find and repair the problems. They needed to wear full rubber clothes including rubber gloves with leather insets, which can withstand five thousand volts of electricity,” Picco said.