Outage in Fort Smith

Hay River (February 15, 2005) On Monday, February 14, at 9.20pm, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) experienced a failure at the Taltson Power Plant resulting in an outage in Fort Smith, Fort Resolution and Hay River.

A control board in the computer system caused the Taltson facility to shutdown. Power was restored to the communities of Fort Resolution and Hay River in 45 minutes when their standby diesel plants were started.

The Fort Smith standby diesel plant, which consists of three engines experienced problems with starting two of them. The one operating diesel engine did provide partial power to the town along with the emergency generator at the hospital. As a result, the downtown of Fort Smith was without power for a period of 6 to 6.5 hours. NTPC personnel were dispatched and made repairs to the two diesel engines and power was fully restored to Fort Smith by 4am.

For more information contact:

Vaughan Slade, Communications Coordinator
Tel: (867) 874-5215
Cell: (867) 874-1288