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Topic: Deadly frightening low temps.... (Read 459 times)

MzWings
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Deadly frightening low temps....
« on: Jan 30^th, 2004, 8:22am »

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FYI: When the mercury hits -40C, it's also -40F. The wind chill was about -55 to -61. What am I doing here?

From The Winnipeg Free Press:

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

Tricia Lamm keeps warm at home.

A town with no heat
By Jason Bell and Carol Sanders
Here's how Stonewall came through the cold

STONEWALL -- Residents here baked muffins, did the laundry and stoked the logs in the fireplace or wood stove yesterday -- anything to generate heat after the town lost its natural gas feed for about eight hours.

With the mercury at -40 C, it didn't take long for the chill to creep into the 1,200 homes and businesses left without heat.

"The needle on the thermostat is buried. We had to do something to keep warm," said Tricia Lamm, wrapped in a heavy quilt and standing next to the oven.

"We have candles going and a small space heater. This is an old house, and there's not much insulation."

Manitoba Hydro crews spent hours in the frigid cold constructing a bypass pipeline to flow gas around a blockage in a line to the town of 5,000 people, just north of Winnipeg.

At about 1 p.m., a temporary fix was in place, and 100 Hydro workers went door to door, turning gas services back on and igniting the pilot lights in homes and businesses. Three hours later, gas service was restored to about 80 per cent of the affected customers, who had been without heat since 5 a.m.

The cause of the accident was unknown yesterday.

Hydro spokeswoman Marjorie Patterson said when the temperature rises, crews will dig up the problem spot to learn how the line became blocked.

"It's too cold for the hydraulic equipment and the crews working there," said Patterson.

She couldn't say if the problem was related to the deep cold gripping Manitoba.

People should always have contingency plans in the event of a natural gas or electricity failure, Patterson said. "It's a reminder to all of us to be prepared for no heat," she said. "It should generate some family discussion of 'what would we do if....'"

Lois Fast coped by leaving early from her job at the dental centre to keep the home fires burning.

She used the electric oven to warm the kitchen and bake muffins and cake for her husband, John, and her brother, Ken Reagh and his son, Cody, 11, who live nearby.

"We come from the country -- we're used to having our power going off," said Lois, who grew up in Binscarth.

Stonewall had an emergency plan and it went off without a hitch, said Mayor Ross Thompson, adding the gas was restored before the town had to resort to an evacuation plan.

Officials at the local hospital -- the Stonewall and District Health Centre -- moved six patients to the hospital in Selkirk and two to Johnson Memorial Hospital in Gimli, while another eight were transferred to Rosewood Lodge personal care facility in Stonewall, which is heated with electricity.

The hospital was a top priority to get natural gas restored, and patients were moved back to the centre by ambulance late in the day.

The Lions Centre, the Oddfellows Hall and the Stony Mountain Rec Centre were ready to take in anyone who needed to stay warm. A community hall with electric heat was also opened to the public.

"I'm really thrilled with the community aspect of this," said Thompson. "This is a first for a lot of us with anything like this, and we have done very well. "I also think we learned a lot."

People in Stonewall rallied to the cause with offers of help -- including Stonewall pet store owner Lynne Sutton, who offered to house pets for anyone who had to leave their home.

And there were also offers of help from as far away as Saskatoon and Thompson.

Mayor Thompson said Winnipeg, Scanterbury and Selkirk called yesterday morning to ask if they could help.

The provincial Emergency Measures Organization arranged for the Stonewall fire hall to act as a drop off and loan centre for electric space heaters to provide extra warmth until the heat was restored to homes.

The Varndell family spent most the day huddled around a wooden stove in the rec room and had plenty of logs ready to go, just in case.

"It was cold in the house this morning, but we're back up to about 17 C now," said Jim Varndell, about noon yesterday. "I don't know what we would have done without it.

'Lucky'

"We've still got a couple of cords of wood outside if we need it. We're lucky, because there's not too many people that have wood stoves in town anymore." Over at the Lamms', Tricia's husband Barry said he woke up and immediately felt a chill.

"I got up because I thought something was wrong with the furnace," he said. "I took a look and the pilot light was out. I couldn't get it going, so I phoned the furnace guy.

"He had a message on his machine saying the whole town of Stonewall was down. I guess he got sick and tired of all the calls."

Volunteer firefighters armed with pipe wrenches and icicles hanging from their noses had to go from house to house and business to business turning off gas services until the town's natural gas supply was restored.

At times they waded through hip-deep snowdrifts to shut off the gas and make sure the lines were clear before the service was restored late yesterday afternoon.

The firefighters had other things on their minds as well.

Yesterday, a funeral was held for 55-year-old Harvey Wayne Tyerman, Stonewall's fire chief, although some people in town likely had to miss the service because of the dilemma in town.

Said Thompson: "Wayne would have wanted us out there addressing the emergency."

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