Weekend power outage in Yellowknife an expensive frustration for some businesses

It was shaping up to be a busy spring weekend for businesses and events in Yellowknife, until a power outage shut almost everything down on Saturday afternoon.

Some residents say they were without power for up to seven hours.

The outage was a significant blow to many local businesses.

Mark Henry, president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and co-owner of Copperhouse restaurant, says power outages aren't unusual, but the biggest concern for many business owners is the impact that a prolonged outage can have on some equipment.

"There's quite often fried equipment that can run thousands and thousands of dollars, and then impact your ability to execute on your business operations," Henry said.

Henry says outages during one of the busiest times of the week are especially disruptive for the service industry. He says he received phone calls and texts from several businesses expressing their frustrations.

"There's impact on the lost revenue, the stress on staff that goes on. They're not quite sure what to do in a restaurant setting. You have a packed house, they've all ordered, and there's no way to execute on," Henry said.

Naka Power says a faulty circuit breaker caused the city-wide power failure. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. 

Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, earlier told CBC News that the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages.

Performance of musical cancelled

A local performance of a touring play at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre was also cancelled on Saturday evening.

It was the only scheduled performance of Children of God, a musical by Corey Payette, in Yellowknife. It was set to run at 7:30 p.m. at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre but just before showtime, organizers had to pull the plug.

Kacie Hall, the centre's communications manager, says it's never had a cancellation of this nature before, and Hall is grateful that audiences were patient and understanding.

"This was a pretty big loss for our community and even for the presenting company, Urban Ink. They brought 20 people to Yellowknife between their cast and crew, which we don't often have such large shows in our programming," Hall said.

Hall says it's especially frustrating, since the play was originally scheduled in Yellowknife in 2020 but was also cancelled then, due to the pandemic.

"This show in particular was a tough loss for us... it's been twice that we've tried to bring it to Yellowknife and haven't been able to," Hall said.

Chris Wood, general manager at the Capitol Theatre, says the power outage had a "horrendous impact" on his theatre, costing around $10,000 in revenue — and more.

"It also took down our computer system, which took 24 hours to come back online. It corrupted files, it took out backups, and only now are we starting to get our figures entered from the weekend," Wood said.

Wood says customers were understanding during the ordeal. He adds that they're used to power outages, though usually shorter ones.

"They're usually 20 minutes to 40 minutes at the most. But now when we have power outages, they seem to last a lot longer than they used to," Wood said.

For others, Saturday's outage was not as disruptive. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) held its spring carnival over weekend in Dettah, where an estimated 700 to 1,000 people visited and participated.

Jennifer Charlo, the recreation coordinator at the YKDFN, says with the help of a backup generator, things were able to go on as planned. She says the power outage may have even brought more people out to the event at the local hall.

"They were, like, telling me the power was out. They're like, 'oh well, might as well go back to the hall,'" Chor said.