The work continues in Eastern and Southern Ontario after deadly spring storms with high winds downed power lines and caused widespread damage.
New Brunswick Contractors are assisting with the clean-up as over 100 workers from K-Line Construction in Woodstock are on the ground.
Fleet Vice-President Courtney Keenan said they are dealing with a lot of broken electrical poles, adding “That requires them to go in and start stripping out the old lines, cutting up any trees and any of the old poles and removing them. They dig new holes, set new poles, string new lines and put up new cross arms.”
Keenan noted, “They’re up there with bucket and digger trucks. There are areas where there’s a couple hundred poles all broke off so they have long days. A lot of these guys are retirees from the utilities so they’re not necessarily the youngest guys, but they’re still putting in 14 and 16 hour days and they’ll do it until they’re sent home. When we go south, we’ve been there as long as 30 days before and it’s always tough because you’re always working in storm conditions. There’s always storms that come with wind. There’s a lot of water to deal with, a lot of mud. That’s one thing that they’re dealing with up in Ontario is a lot of these pole lines are going out through farming areas and communities. So, it’s a lot of soft drain. So, they’re using backhoes to dig the holes and then using the digger trucks to set the poles.”
Nearly a million people were left without power due to the storms.
“Some of (the contractors) have made comparisons to the ice storm in 1998. Long strings of poles that are just broken off. One of our crews headed out yesterday to a job site where it was sixteen poles in a row that were all cut off and it was phase three lines, so there’s a lot of infrastructure damage,” mentioned Keenan.
Crews from K and M Utility Lines in Neguac are also assisting.
Environment Canada has confirmed that an EF2 tornado touched down as part of the strong storm system that made its way through the province on Saturday, killing at least 10 people.
