The provincial trunked mobile radio (TMR) system was down for almost a day during a hurricane last September, affecting pager systems and communication between emergency responders.
That should not be happening each time there is a storm said Chief Michael Wilson,Cornwall & District Fire Department and he wants to know why preventative maintenance is not being done by NS Power and is demanding answers.
Wilson sent an e-mail to local MLAs, MPs and the regional EMO expressing his concern and frustration over NSP’s failure to provide essential services.
The hurricane caused the worst outage in the area to date and power wasn’t restored in some cases for a week, but since then comparatively small storms have also led to a loss of essential services. Wilson says that this is an ongoing issue that has been getting progressively worse over the past two years, with power outages becoming more frequent and of longer duration.
“We’ve lived here our whole lives and have seen some pretty nasty storms but these last couple have not been big storms. What happens when we get the big Nor’easter? The power issues are a known problem but we have a company that isn’t doing any preventative maintenance and when something happens everybody else has to make up for the shortfalls,” he said.
After the communication system failure New Germany Fire Department switched to a radio based paging system and Walden,New Germany and Cornwall now share a repeater on the Church Lake tower that doesn’t rely on telephone for emergency paging.
Paul Casey, Vice President,Transmission,Distribution and Delivery, for NS Power said that they have at least 40 forestry trucks out cutting trees every day across the province and as trees get near power lines there are more outages.
He insists that NS Power is responding to what they are seeing and hearing from residents who are saying there are too many trees and tree outages.
“We are trying to do our best to get to those areas and cut those trees back. We recognize also that over the last couple of years winds in the province have increased significantly,the occurrences of wind gusts have increased significantly and that’s what has the greatest impact on the power system,” he said.
Casey has reached out to Wilson and will be meeting with him in the coming weeks to discuss the issues at hand.
Wilson said in speaking with Casey it was evident he was concerned about the need for improvements.
