Amid a temperature of –26 C factoring in the wind chill, homes in Cochenour, Ont., were left with no heat after a natural gas outage was reported Friday morning.
Alexandra Rozender, one of fewer than 1,000 people living in the community, called CBC News on her way back to Cochenour, saying she was worried about her pets in the cold temperatures as the no-heat issue continued seven hours later.
She was heading out of town for the weekend but turned back after learning of the outage.
“It‘s a small mining town. A lot of people get up early in the morning and they’re at the mine by 6 a.m. So, I assume that a lot of people didn’t even notice it this morning.”
The natural gas outage was first reported around 8 a.m. CT. The municipality posted an update on Facebook shortly after 2:30 p.m., saying crews with Enbridge Gas have gone door to door to shut off natural gas services at people’s homes “as part of the ongoing disruption response.”
“Once natural gas service is restored, Enbridge crews will need access inside each home to restart the gas supply. We anticipate this will begin in 30 minutes to one hour with testing beginning at the mine site first,” the post says.
“Residents are asked to ensure someone is available to provide entry when crews return.”
Residents who can’t be home to allow workers in are asked to contact Enbridge at 807-464-0646 to make arrangements.
CBC News reached out to Enbridge Gas and did receive a response.
A company spokesperson said, “they are actively working to restore service as quickly and as safely as possible. Our hope is that repairs will be completely overnight. Residents should prepare to be without gas for 24 hours, but we will provide an update in the morning.”
The spokesperson also said, “Once repairs are complete, Enbridge representatives will require access to the inside of each home to perform this work.”
Rozender wonders what will happen to people who aren’t around to let crews inside their homes.
“Enbridge has said that if we aren’t there to meet them to turn the gas back on individually door to door tonight [Friday], then we would have to make an appointment for somebody else to come back out,” she said.
“Countless people are gonna have their pipes burst. God knows what else will happen [with] people’s pets and things like that when there’s nobody home to let them back in to turn it back on.”
A similar natural gas outage occurred last January, said Rozender, and it lasted nearly 24 hours. It took several hours to restore service to all the homes.
“This whole situation happened exactly the same way last January, and so I’m very surprised that they haven’t put anything in place to monitor or to make sure that crews and equipment were able to get out to fix a situation like this quicker than last year.”
According to Rozender, last year, crews travelled more than 550 kilometres from Thunder Bay to restore the service.
Having grown up in southern Ontario, she said, it’s hard to come to terms with how challenging it can be to get personnel to respond to emergency situations in more remote areas.
“A lot of people in Canada might be sort of sensitive to the idea of our northern communities not having the services that they’re used to.”
