Calgary downtown power infrastructure destroyed

A fire in a manhole in downtown Calgary on Saturday, October 11 caused buildings in a wide area to be left without power. Approximately 112 residential and commercial buildings, representing 2,100 businesses and 5,000 residents are affected in a 17-block area. The fire occurred in a manhole at 8 Avenue and 5 Street SW.

The utility company Enmax is having to completely rebuild 3.5 kilometres of high voltage cables and replace them. By Tuesday, October 14, they had pulled 137 cables and done about 15% of the cable splicing to connect new cable to the existing network. They were hoping to have the work completed by mid-day on Thursday.

At least one consulting engineering firm was affected by the outage, which closed off areas to traffic, affected phone lines as well as the power, and meant that water was not available in the upper floors of towers. The city was asking companies to keep their offices closed. AMEC’s office building at 6th Avenue SW, for example, was shut down.