In Arviat, Nunavut, residents start recovering from fierce blizzard

After four days without electricity or heat, Bernadette Illungiayok finally has power in her unit.

A ferocious blizzard knocked out electricity for all of Arviat, Nunavut, on Nov. 21, during the first big snowstorm of the season. 

Her son, Andy Illungiayok, remembers driving his ATV in zero visibility for half a kilometre to check on her that afternoon. 

"When she found out there was no power on in her unit she went out to the shack to grab the naptha camping fuel to start that Coleman stove," he said. She used that stove to heat her home for four nights until her power was restored on Saturday afternoon. 

"She's grateful to have full power and happy to be home. Home is warming up pretty good."

Local state of emergency called

According to Qulliq Energy Corporation, Nunavut's power corporation, power was restored to all homes in Arviat at about 3:30 p.m. local time on Saturday.

Only hours earlier, 53 homes in the community were still without power, according to Daniel Alagalak, an employee at Arviat's local housing corporation.

Mayor Joe Savikataaq Jr. held a special meeting of the hamlet council on Friday evening to declare a local state of emergency —which gives the hamlet more power to address the outages, he told CBC News.

"Thinking of all these families that are cold, going to bed, trying to keep their houses warm … we went into a local state of emergency" he said.

Savikataaq said the fact that runway lights were not working at Arviat's only airport and the local gas station not being able to dispense fuel contributed to the decision.

"We are in dire need of gasoline," he told CBC News on Friday.

During the outages, the local housing corporation kept moving Arviat's six generators between all the homes which which still needed power — while its six employees worked around the clock in eight-hour shifts. 

Alagalak said they were forced to run the heat in each building just until it started to get warm, before moving the generator to a new building and running the heat there.

Despite this, Savikataaq said pipes burst in several homes because of the cold, which caused flooding.

Residents of Arviat, who were already on a trucked water and sewage system, have had to ration their water supply as a result of the blizzard, the mayor added.

Need for more infrastructure, mayor says

Savikataaq said Arviat needs more infrastructure and resources to prevent this from happening in the future.

"It'd be nice to have our lines upgraded so that they could take higher winds to prevent any line slapping from happening. And [to] have some sort of a backup power in case power does go out," he said.

"And I know there are backup generators, but when a whole area goes out, there is no other way, so it'd be nice to have some other form of energy producing thing to heat these homes at minimum or anything that might arise."

The other major resource lacking in the community of over 2,800 people: a permanent power line technician. 

When the power went out during this week's blizzard, a lack of visibility and problems at the airport meant it was days until technicians were able to fly into the community from the regional hub of Rankin Inlet — a 45-minute flight away — and repair fallen lines.

Savikataaq said he is asking the Nunavut government for a permanent technician. 

"It would be nice to have a lineman based in Arviat ... it is big enough now it can sustain a position like that."

Record-breaking winds

Andy Illungiayok is seeing the changes in his community. 

"Back then when I was a child we didn't have much power outages, but now, when it it hits, the blizzard, we get power outages," he explained. "Arviat is getting bigger. Every year … there are more units."

Environment and Climate Change Canada says a number of communities along the Hudson Bay and western Nunavut, including some in Nunavik, have been affected by this blizzard.

During the blizzard, wind speeds across the region reached record highs for the month of November. 

On Nov. 22, winds gusted to 119 km/h in Arviat — the highest wind gust ever recorded in November in the community.

In the western Nunavut hamlet of Baker Lake, winds were even higher at 126 km/h. In the communities of Rankin Inlet and Chesterfield Inlet, gusts reached 100 km/h.