Hydro One sorry for poor communication during freezing northern Ont. power outage

The state of emergency has been lifted in the northern Ontario community of Hearst after power was restored amid arctic temperatures.

Hydro One has apologized for poor communication with a northern Ontario community during a power outage on one of the coldest nights of the year that ended with a state of emergency.

“We’re here to apologize first of all … and to do things better,” Hydro One Works executive VP Teri French told councillors in Hearst on Tuesday evening.

French was sorry for an outage that led to the state of emergency Jan. 20, when temperatures dipped into the -51 C range with the wind chill.

As the mercury plunged, Hydro One kept changing the estimated restoration time, leaving town officials to set up warming centres at the last minute and declare the state of emergency.

Officials were angry that they couldn’t speak with anyone to get clear answers.

“It was 51 below, it’s not acceptable,” Mayor Roger Sigouin told French.

“The response was 9 o’clock OK, it’s going to be back, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock -- we didn’t have an exact time because we wanted to put the emergency … group together to make sure all of our people were going to be safe.”

One older woman was stuck in a freezing basement, he said. Police arrived and had to call an ambulance.

“She was cold and no one with her -- no family, so they just transferred her to the hospital,” said Sigouin.

“Imagine if she had passed away.”

“Minus 50 is unacceptable,” French agreed.

“Where we fell down is on the estimated time of restoration -- the ETR which we call it. We told you 9 because we thought we had found the issue. Something else happened and we pushed it out. I’m not making an excuse, this is how it happened and it didn’t give you the ability to prepare your community for a warming centre.”

“That to me was a miss, the biggest miss,” she added.

French told councillors they would see improvements and better communication going forward.

“If you had known that and could have prepared accordingly, we wouldn’t be having the issues that we have,” she said.

Coun. Joël Lauzon was unimpressed, calling French’s words a “bald-face lie.”

“You did not do your job,” Lauzon said.

“Communication was not there. It was not somebody on the line communicating with us -- both could have happened simultaneously and you can not tell me otherwise.”

Things started happening

Lauzon said the process only started moving forward after the mayor appeared on CTV News Northern Ontario complaining about Hydro One’s response.

“All of a sudden, things started happening and people started communicating back with us -- calls were being returned,” Lauzon said.

When Sigouin asked Hydro One to take responsibility for the poor response by providing coffee and doughnuts for the warming centre, he was refused.

“The answer he got back was … yeah, that’s something we don’t do, that’s not in our policies,” Lauzon said.

“I’m sorry but when you mess up, you try and do something better, you try and make it right -- and you did not at all.”

“You’re right, fair comment,” French replied.

“Fair point, the coffee and doughnuts, that was absolutely a miss on our part. I’m not making an excuse, it is what it is, they took it literally. We should have had our communications team and emergency management team work with the group to make sure we could facilitate that group.”

The meeting ended with a commitment from Hydro One to work better with Hearst’s public utilities company to improve the situation going forward.

Donation to community centre

French also vowed to keep in touch with them about future improvements and upgrades being made in the area as the town looks to attract more mining and industry.

She said the reason she made the trip was she wanted to hear the feedback and find out what they could do better to work with the community.

An information session is being planned for Kapuskasing at a later date.

The Hydro One official also made a $2,500 donation to their community centre to improve the facility on behalf of herself and the provincial company.