SASKATOON -- The wildfires raging north of Prince Albert knocked out the power to Prince Albert National Park and the town of Waskesiu on Monday afternoon, and it still hadn’t returned by Thursday afternoon.
“We are running everything off of power generators right now,” said Robyn Hufnagel, communications manager with Prince Albert National Park.
“The visitor center, the entrance gates, the campgrounds, beaches, parking lots, playgrounds, everything is open and available.”
Businesses and residents in the town of Waskesiu are now left without power for heat, and trying to keep food from spoiling.
“We were able to get a generator from the park, and we've got our ice cream in as many freezers we can,” said co-owner of the Trading Company grocery store Les Archer.
He says they have half a dozen freezers and coolers full of food, and they’ve already turned away trucks with food deliveries because there’s nowhere to store it.
“We sent it back, and the Co-op was good enough to take it back for us,” he said.
“We have a bunch of stuff coming actually, like all our fresh produce and stuff doesn't come till tomorrow, and milk.”
Year-round resident Lauren Markewicz says people in the tight-knit community were reaching out and helping each other with generators almost immediately on Monday.
“Since then I've really been mostly cooking on my camp stove,” she said. “We've been swapping generators around, or ‘Oh, I have a vehicle if you plug your phone in, you can charge your phone that way.’”
“A couple of my friends who were out of town at the time have now come back, they were gone for two or three days and didn't get a chance to move their food, so they've had some spoiled food.”
Markewicz says it’s getting pretty cold without power for heat.
“I've been wearing extra layers, also doing what my dad would say, he would be like ‘Put on another sweater and it's fine’. So for my part, I'm more inconvenienced than anything else.”
“It was a little bit cool at night here,” said Archer. “There's a few people having some water issues. There’s the odd cabin or whatever that needs to get their water on and running a little bit, just to keep the flow going so it doesn't freeze.”
“Our message for the public right now is to be self sufficient, and really plan and prepare in case the outage lasts into the long weekend,” said Hufnagel.
“Services like gas stations, money machines, ice, restaurants, grocery stores—may all be limited north of the city of Prince Albert, so it's really important that people prepare and be self sufficient on their way to the park this weekend in case that outage does last.”
