Toronto hosts heat wave, power outage, royal visit

Power was gradually being restored to parts of Toronto Monday evening after a fire erupted at a transformer station in the city's west end, knocking out power to 240,000 Toronto Hydro customers.

"We are working on getting everybody back on," said Daffyd Roderick, a spokesman for Hydro One, which supplies power to distributor Toronto Hydro.

He couldn't say when power would be fully restored or what caused the fire that sparked the failure, which happened at around 4:45 p.m. ET during an extreme heat alert and caused traffic chaos at the height of the city's afternoon rush hour.

Roderick said Hydro One is working on getting all of the big circuits that connect its transformer stations up and running after losing about 900 megawatts of electricity inside the affected area.

The fire happened at the Manby Transformer Station on Kipling Avenue in the Etobicoke section of Toronto.

Hydro One said equipment at the station caught fire and that the cause of the blaze is under investigation. No injuries have been reported at the station, the power company said.

Six Toronto Hydro substations fed by Hydro One are out of service as a result of the outage, Toronto Hydro said.

Power is being restored through a process called backfilling, which is when hydro agencies draw on other sources of power and re-route the power around the out-of-commission transfer station to get it to customers, the CBC's Muhammad Lila reported.

"Hydro One has told us that pockets of power are going to be coming and going," he said.
Helpful numbers

* Hydro One: report a power outage 1-800-434-1235.
* Toronto Hydro: power outage hotline 416-542-8000.
* Toronto Police Service: non-emergency services 416-808-2222.
* Toronto Transit Commission: 416-393-4636.
* Greater Toronto Airport Authority: departures schedule Terminal 1: 416-AIRPORT (416-247-7678); Terminal 3: 416-776-5100.

Commuter chaos

A map posted on the Toronto Hydro website soon after the outage showed large swaths of the city had been affected.

According to the map, the area where outages occurred stretched from Renforth Drive in the west to Yonge Street in the east, and from the Gardiner Expressway in the south to Highway 401 in the north.

The blackout hit on a day when temperatures in the city rose to a muggy, sweltering 34 C and disrupted many commuters.

According to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), subway service was down from Jane to Kipling stations on the Bloor-Danforth line during the outage and had to be replaced with shuttle buses. There were also minor delays reported along the Yonge-University-Spadina line at Union Station.

By 7:30 p.m. ET, subway service was restored, TTC chair Adam Giambrone said.
A pedestrian directs traffic at King Street and University Avenue in the downtown core. A pedestrian directs traffic at King Street and University Avenue in the downtown core. (Guin Orvis/CBC)

Streetcars and buses although still running were delayed because of the many downed traffic lights.

At the height of the outage, stranded commuters filled the streets as police — and sometimes pedestrians — directed traffic.

Pedestrian Aseel El-Baba took it upon herself to direct traffic at King and Wellington streets in downtown Toronto for about an hour before police arrived.

"I saw two near car accidents, and I thought, 'OK, I have to do something'," she told CBC News. "The first five minutes were scary, but I got used to it."

Police told her she was a safety risk and urged her to leave the intersection, she said.

The power went out briefly at Pearson International Airport, but the airport authority's website showed few flight delays.

Capt. Mike Strapko of Toronto Fire Services said firefighters had to rescue some people who got trapped in elevators when the power failed.
Giant fireball reported

Stephen Michalowicz of the local news website Torontoist reported seeing a "giant fireball" near the Kipling Avenue facility.
Queen Elizabeth attended a state dinner at the downtown Royal York Hotel, which was among the buildings that lost power. The 7:30 p.m. dinner, hosted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, proceeded despite the outage.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/07/05/toronto-hydro.html#ixzz0srRAK498
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Toronto hosts heat wave, power outage, royal visit

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July 05, 2010 8:36 p.m.
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TORONTO - A power outage that left large swaths of Toronto in the dark as the city sweltered Monday also turned out the lights on Prince Philip.

A fire at a west-end transformer station sapped some 1,000 megawatts from the city, which is hosting the royal couple amid a heat wave.

Prince Philip was presenting the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, a program that encourages youth to participate in community service, among other areas, at the Royal York Hotel when the lights went out.

The emergency power kicked in and Prince Philip soldiered on, presenting the awards in the dimly lit room, joking with parents in the audience.

The outage had threatened to darken a dinner with the Queen, Prince Philip and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but full power was restored to the hotel just in time.

Some didn't seem too concerned that the power outage came when the royal couple was in town.

"They're just people like the rest of us," said Scottish tourist Sandy Horsburgh, who was at the top of the CN Tower when the lights went off.

Hydro One said the cause of the fire, which turned the lights out in pockets throughout the city at 4:42 p.m. ET, was under investigation. There were no injuries.

Hydro One spokesman Daffyd Roderick said about 240,000 customers were without power at the height of the outage.

Power was fully restored by about 8:30 p.m. ET, Roderick said.

Toronto Hydro appealed to customers to wait at least 15 minutes after power was restored before turning air conditioning back on to avoid overloading the grid.

The Independent Electricity System Operator reported on its website that power demand in the province was at 24,567 megawatts at 5 p.m. — exceeding the day's predicted peak of 24,351.

The outage was substantial enough to cause blips on the provincial grid, with reports of the lights flickering as far away as Ottawa.

Rishi Ghuldu helped direct traffic when he got off work early because of the power failure.

"When I came out I saw it was a lot of chaos and I thought I should actually help out by directing traffic and making the pedestrians cross the road safely," he said.

The Barrick Gold employee spent about an hour at a couple of intersections on Bay Street until a police officer asked him to move on.

"He said if someone were to get hurt they could actually sue me so he asked me to leave the spot," Ghuldu said.

Hiba Abdou noted that the power outage came on the heels of an eventful period for the city — the G20, the royal visit and "now this."

"Who knows what's next."

Toronto and most of Ontario are in the grip of a heat wave, with temperatures in the mid-30s. Humidex values are expected to be in the 40-degree range during the next few days.

At the height of the outage Sherway Gardens, a large shopping mall in the west end, was in the dark as was the Toronto stock exchange in the financial district.

Two subway stations in the west end were affected. The city's streetcars, which draw from a different power source, were not hit by the outage.