RIVERS
BANNER December 23, 2016
ersary v i n Celebrating our 108th An
Gazette-Reporter
Serving the Rivers, Rapid City and Oak River areas for 107 years
Volume 109, Issue 26
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Outage an auger effect
By Sheila Runions Banner Staff
S
elect homeowners between Oak River and Rivers were without power for up to 13 hours on Sunday, Dec. 18. The reason was because of an inattentive driver. “A male in his late 50s was driving a Maple Leaf feed truck and the auger was e tended; it had not been retracted, says Rivers Police Chief Bruce lassen. As he proceeded from Oak River to Rivers, he clipped a number of lines, unbeknownst to him, until he was flagged down. There will be no charges laid on our part; whether or not Manitoba Hydro or MTS go after him for money will be a civil proceeding. In Rivers, the line in question was between ifth and Si th Avenue on Hwy. 250, which was barricaded for more than eight hours by Rivers ambulance and fire truck. Besides the vehicles and their ashing lights,
MS and department members helped to divert traffic east or west around that block to ensure safety from the downed line. Jeremy Sawatzky is the media relations and communications specialist for MTS. He says, We acted quickly on Sunday to make repairs to our network and ensure continuity of service for our customers. Through the dedicated action of our technicians in response to this issue, we were able to ensure minimal disruption to customers. We do not publicly discuss specific incidents with respect to third party damage to our network. That said, we do make every effort to ensure that companies working in and around our network have information to help them prevent incidents that damage the communications infrastructure and put the continuity of service and safety of the public at risk.
Scott Powell is Manitoba Hydro s manager of public affairs. Since hydro was the most affected party, he had more information to share. It started appro imately seven miles north of Oak River, along Hwy. 24 to Rivers and south of Rivers on PR 250. We called 911 and had police ag him down or else the damage would just continue. In total along that route we had 10 broken poles that needed total replacement and 26 wire taps that were torn down and which feed various roads with houses and farms on them. There could be five to seven customers per tap; the number of customers we had affected was between 200-250. We also had two transformers that were damaged and needed to be replaced, so it was a significant amount of work. The first call of no power came in from the Oak River
area around 12 p.m. One of our staff in Oak River had actually reported to us a downed line at 11:45 so our on-call person was already dispatched before the first customer call came in. We had 14 staff respond to this, with si from our irden service centre and eight from Brandon; because this was such a large area, some are served by irden and some by Brandon. We had lots of crews working together. We sent bucket trucks, auger trucks, flat decks hauling the new poles, gravel trucks for the back fill for those new poles .. it was some pretty serious damage and unfortunately, this happens and it s not that rare of an occurrence. But everything was restored to the last customer, e cept for one inactive farm site, by 1 a.m. Monday morning. We appreciate our customers patience on an especially cold day (-32C to -22C plus winds).
Our guys were busting their tails to get that work done and we just want to thank everyone for their patience, and consideration given to our crews as they worked on the highways. In regards to compensation claims for equipment repairs and overtime hours, Powell states, Our standard practice for any damage to our infrastructure regarding motor vehicles is to file a claim with MPI; how MPI handles it, I can t say. His final message was simply a safety reminder: Any time we have dump trucks, feed trucks, oversi e trucks, we tell people to make sure buckets and booms are down as you can do a lot of damage. You gotta watch for wires. The danger not only e ists for the driver but it e tends to public too. If you are unsure of your clearance, please give us a call We want to prevent damage to the system.
Foundation continues to grow A By Sheila Runions Banner Staff
t the seventh annual meeting of Rivers & Area Community Foundation (RACF) it was interesting to note the differences in the financial report, as audited by Sensus accounting. The 2014 audit confirmed 452,313 in assets and 24,731 in e penses; 2015 had 459,600 in assets and only 16,829 as e penses. Treasurer Craig Allison e plained the primary reasons for fewer e penses last year. In 2014 there was a granting ow-through of 10,000 from Brandon Area Community oundation to RAC on behalf of Wetland Centre of cellence. This e pense deemed granting is offset by the increased revenue from the flow through portion contributing to 2014 revenues of 33,888 compared to 2015, 24,079. Secondly, in anuary 2015, the 2014 scholarship recipient of riends of RCI was presented their cheque and in December 2015 the 2015 recipient received their cheque. With these factors being accounted for, the difference of the 2014 to 2015 audited e penses would be 98. Continued on page 3
Photo by Sheila Runions
Back row L/R: Directors Al Morken, Brian Carlisle, Diane Marriott, Donna Falkevitch, Wayne Wareham, Peter Mellings. Front row L/R: Vice-president Ian Dyer, secretary Michelle McFadden, treasurer Craig Allison, president Donna Morken. Missing: Directors Harry Airey and Stacey Stott.