Manitoba Hydro pledges to restore power to Mathias Colomb Cree Nation by end of September

Manitoba Hydro says it will restore partial power to critical infrastructure at Mathias Colomb Cree Nation by Sept. 11 and full power the week of Sept. 28. The news comes 100 days after the community was evacuated due to wildfires that swept the province last May. “We’ve got to get home,” Bear told reporters at a news conference in Winnipeg on Friday. “Our children are suffering, we’re suffering. We’re trying to keep each other intact as leaders. As supporters.” The Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (Puktawagan) is located 800 km northwest of Winnipeg near the Saskatchewan border. Most of its citizens were relocated to Winnipeg, Brandon and Niagara Falls, Ont. According to Manitoba Hydro, they have been in discussions with the community’s leadership. “We appreciate and understand the difficult situation they are in. We are focusing our efforts on safely restoring power as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to APTN News. Officials at Manitoba Hydro say 253 wood pole structures were damaged or destroyed in the community and along two transmission lines. They have repaired or replaced 155 so far. Many areas are in remote, difficult terrain accessible only by helicopter and holes must be bored in rock to set new poles, according to Manitoba Hydro. First Nation leaders from Manitoba chastised the federal and provincial governments for failing to follow through on a verbal promise to provide a northern Cree community with a generator. Bear said people are ready to go home, and he had asked for four generators costing $8 million to get the infrastructure, including the water treatment plant, back online. The generators would be permanent and used for future outages, as it is not uncommon for the community to lose power due to fire and other outages. Continue Reading