Cold weather creates issues for schools and businesses

There were four grid alerts over the weekend due to power supply issues with the cold weather.

These alerts will be a topic of discussion at tonight’s council meeting in Medicine Hat.

As members of the community are curious about the city owned utilities and what provincial power shortages mean for us here.

Buses weren’t running this morning to the schools around Medicine Hat.

This lead to parents having to find alternate transportation for their kids to get to school.

Ted Flitton, a spokesperson for Southland Transportation said that safety and reliability of service are their primary consideration at all times, especially in extreme temperatures.

“With this weekend’s record-breaking cold weather, we monitored temperatures, wind chill and road conditions while assessing the reliability of our buses all weekend,” Flitton said.

“Attempting to start buses in extreme cold can diminish the vehicle’s future reliability by damaging mechanical components.”

“Extreme cold deteriorates much of the batteries’ reserve CCA (cold cranking amp) capacity, in many cases resulting in permanent damage to the batteries when completely depleted. Additionally, components such as the transmission, turbochargers, hoses and fuel systems will fail.”

“Guided by safety and reliability decisions, we made the decision to cancel Monday’s service at noon on Sunday.”

“As soon as we decided on our course of action, we immediately contacted the school divisions so they could communicate with parents giving as much advance notice as possible.”

“We urge all parents to ensure students dress appropriately for such extreme temperatures and to not leave students at bus stops for extended periods. Families should also always have a backup plan in case of delays or cancellations.”

For parents at one school in the city, the school was closed for their children today.

Saint Michael’s school had their boiler go down last night.

Efforts to get the system back up and running did not come together.

Dwayne Zarichny, Superintendent with the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education said the air intake system caused the failure.

“The boiler and everything were working fine, it was just that the air intake valve got plugged and shut the boiler off,” Zarichny said.

“Because of that, the school cooled off and the pipes froze and we’re in the situation that we’re in now.”

Saint Michael’s school will also be closed Tuesday, the school board announced later this afternoon.

Zarichny mentioned the repair timeline is still unknown.

“One of the issues, of course is accessing parts and whenever we get cold weather like this, those parts that typically fail during cold weather are in demand,” Zarichny said.

“It’ll depend on what’s wrong and then if the parts are available to fix.”

An update will be sent out to Saint Michael’s parents by 4pm on Tuesday on if classes will resume on Wednesday.

The Rogers/Shaw internet outage that left a number of customers in Redcliff and Medicine Hat without service was resolved shortly after 3pm today according to the company website.

A spokesperson with the company told CHAT TV news that the interruption was due to fibre damage, caused by the extreme cold weather.

These internet and phone line issues created a loss of business for A1 Pizza Redcliff.

Owner/Operator Azhar Iqbal said they had been without internet and phone services since about 5:45pm Friday before they were restored Monday morning.

“Mainly our business we are based on the phone calls, and then we have skip online ordering system,” said Iqbal.

“So everything was down. It was too cold outside.”

“There was no walk in customers.”

“Because of the phone lines and internet, we had no business until the next day.”

Iqbal was hoping that he would get some compensation from Rogers for the downtime, but was told that would not be happening.

Iqbal is hopeful he can make an insurance claim for his lost revenue.

A1 Pizza Redcliff was business as usual this afternoon after services for phone and internet services were restored.

Temperatures are expected to continue to warm up over the next few days as we look to escape the polar vortex.

by Jesse Gill

Cold weather creates issues for schools and businesses

Our Community