Edmonton's extreme cold strains Alberta's energy grid, triggers emergency alert

but we begin with those bone chilling temperatures in many parts of the country causing potentially life-threatening conditions here's a look at the current extreme cold warnings from Environment Canada the polar vortex that arrived this past week continues to blanket much of BC and all of Alberta and Saskatchewan plunging some temperatures in western Canada into Theus 40s Celsius these frigid temperatures have also triggered an emergency alert and are affecting the services people rely on Linda Ward is tracking this story for us and she joins us now so Linda tell us about this alert that was sent out to albertans yeah this uh alert is really the latest in a a series of effects that this cold snap has had on essential services that people rely on across the West Coast but we'll tell you about this uh that went out to the the phones across the province this uh warning of high-risk rotating power outages asking Alberton to limit their power use to only essential needs during the peak hours of 4: and 7:00 p.m. Alberta's Electric Systems operator issuing a similar grid alert on Friday saying cold temperatures are putting too much stress on the grid it's causing higher usage but also lower Imports because Alberta gets some of its power from neighboring provinces but BC and Saskatchewan also gripped by this cold snap they're seeing increased demand there as well too but they say this alert worked and within minutes of putting it out they saw power demand uh drop very very significantly and they were able to lift uh that grid alert by about 8:40 p.m. local time meanwhile in 6A First Nation now that's east of Calgary they are under a state of local emergency dozens of homes there losing power they were left without heat the nation opened up a Deerfoot Sports plex and chief Crowfoot school they're putting out CS in the gym they're uh giving out supplies to anyone who needs it uh and uh putting families with elders and children they're being put up in hotel spaces uh so some of those homes were're told have now restored power but the state of local emergency has not been lifted the chief uh wanting to keep these precautions in place because today temperatures there are expected to hit minus 50 so if the furnaces go out again he says at least there's going to be a place for people to go the state of emergency Hillary will be in place until at least tomorrow wow okay minus 50 that that is cold and certainly some really tangible effects in terms of how this is disrupting people's lives and we also know Linda that it's causing some chaos at hospitals in BC so what can you tell us about that yeah absolutely the emergency department at Mission Memorial Hospital is right now on emergency diversion now they had a pipe burst in uh their emergency room uh Fraser Health has been sending emergency patients to other hospitals nearby until further notice they're listed there on that website the rest of the hospital though remains fully operational yesterday cam Loop's Royal Inland Hospital they had a heat failure there temperatures in the art dropping to m six the hospital says patients had to be moved take a listen you know we never when it's you know this cold out you know many people are coming to emerge and you know needing care and the last thing we want is to them be really cold in that area and hly very uncomfortable so and we were able to move patients to another area that was warmer and did some work about putting some more like blockades so that a cold air won't be coming in and I've working on the heater and the facility maintenance team did a great job of of getting things fixed up throughout the day and I can report that the temperature are now up into the higher teens 17 18 degrees in that area getting back to business as usual there but they do say you know if you do have uh emergency need don't delay even with all of these disruptions do head to your nearest emergency room okay Linda thank you for this the cbc's Linda Ward for us well the Mayor of Edmonton says his city is at a breaking point he wants to declare a housing and homelessness emerg and mayor amaret SOI joins us now to speak more about this so mayor SOI thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today well thank you so much for having me so as we were just hearing there uh from Linda from my colleague of course people in Alberta including in your city in Edmonton uh really dealing with some freezing temperatures right now what is the city doing to try to make sure that everyone can protect themselves from this extreme cold well first of all uh I just want to stress the point that that you know admon is a winter City but this is extreme cold we are reaching close to 50us 55 and colder temperatures with wind chill and so city has activated our extreme weather response to keep vulnerable admoni safe during U the cold weather expected over the U coming coming days so what we do whenever we reach uh below uh 20° celius we activate our extreme weather response that kicks a number of things one of them is uh uh opening up uh additional shelters we are very appreciative of our local mosque Al Rashid mosque that uh is in the north side of the city and they have 50 additional spaces that are meant to supplement uh the existing shelter capacity that we have uh in the city so we very appreciative of the community response in these kind of situations we also open our city facilities like R centers and labories that are open for people to come in warm up and um use the facilities and respite and in this extreme cold weather uh we also have uh during this winter actually this is something new that we started u we have two regular city buses running uh from November 1st to uh end of March and they run from 11:00 p.m. till 5:00 a.m. in the morning uh providing transportation to vulnerable populations connecting them to shelters uh or other facilities that open at that time and we are adding another bus uh the third bus running at the same time uh making sure that no one is left out to the cold okay okay so lot lots of lots being done right now around the city then we also know that you are planning to declare a housing and homelessness emergency at a special meeting tomorrow which has been an ongoing issue in the city in Edmonton for quite some time now why do you think the city has reached this breaking point now you know over the last uh number of years particularly uh during Co and after covid we have seen um the number of houseless population uh significantly increased and we are seeing number of them dying uh unfortunately uh last um uh last year uh late last year we have social agencies come to city council and memorialized close to more than 100 adonan that died because they have no place to call so we have a I do want to ask you something that we heard uh just this past Friday from Alberta's minister of seniors community and Social Services Minister and he called this declaration a political stunt so we're wondering why do you think it is necessary what do you think in terms of tangible Solutions what are those tangible solutions that you think might actually come out of this declaration uh I there are tangible Solutions prior to co uh the houseless population in Edmonton and Alberta significantly declined but during Co we have increased population and the social structure the social system that is built to uh uh deal with those situations is uh is not properly funded we don't have enough support of housing units we don't have enough wrapped around Services uh we have shelter capacity but shelter capacity is also not not utilized a lot of houseless population because of various barriers that they face to access shelter capacity right so there are number of issues that we have and we have everyday admoni dying and we last week police announced that two people burnt uh themselves through fire risk because of they were living in an encamp so this is a crisis that we're facing and U and we we take it very seriously and I My Hope Is that uh that both provincial and federal government will step up as they have started doing so which I absolutely appreciate and acknowledge but more needs to be done in order to save lives I do want to talk a little bit more about those encampments because there have been eight encamp eight encampments pardon me that have been deemed high risk and were T torn down in the city recently since then the CBC spoke with Advocates who say that a lot of the people who were displaced they simply moved to a different block so I want to play a little bit of what we heard a little bit earlier today from one of them I was downtown um on the Wednesday of January 3rd and helped a guy take his tent apart and he had a beautifully beautifully set up he had two CS for him and his partner a little bed for his dog Billy Bob and um and the the trucks were coming down the street and we could see them coming the pressure was on to clear up his stuff and move it and where did he go he moved a block away a block east so Mar SOI if if tearing down encampments isn't getting people into safer housing what do you think the solution is you know I I I agree the encampments are the symptom of a bigger problem bigger problem is that we don't have enough support of Housing and rra services I've been calling for that ever since I got elected which are federal and Prov responsibilities and we are always in a reactive mode and that's what you see people do move from one place to the other when their encampments encampments are dismantled some in some cases we have to dismantle those encampments because they suppose very serious health and safety hazard to the occupants and to the to the community but the the the the real challenge is that we don't have enough spaces for people to go to we don't have permanent places for people to Liv that's why I am calling this in an emergency it is in an emergency we have people dying every day and we take it seriously and everyone need to start taking it seriously okay mayor SOI we appreciate your time on a Sunday thank you for this thank you so much for having me