Power Outages
Most outages around Lethbridge are short, but a winter one can make a house cold quickly. This page covers what to do in the first few minutes, how to stay warm and cook safely, carbon monoxide and generators, food safety, keeping phones and medical devices going, and who to call.
On this page
The first ten minutes
Get Prepared starts from a simple idea: your household should be ready to cope on its own during an outage. Most of that is done before the lights go out. When they do:
- Get light safely. Use flashlights or headlamps, not candles. Get Prepared prefers flashlights because candles are a fire risk.
- Check whether it’s just you. Look at your breaker panel or fuse box, and look out the window at the neighbours and streetlights. Don’t touch the panel with wet hands or while standing on a damp floor.
- Report it or check the outage map. See who to call below.
- Protect your electronics. Unplug tools, appliances and electronics, and turn the thermostat down, so a surge doesn’t damage anything when power returns. Leave one light switched on so you’ll know when it’s back.
- Keep the fridge and freezer closed. Every opening lets the cold out.
- Save your phone battery. Turn on battery saver and lower the screen brightness. Text rather than call.
- Check on people. An older neighbour, a relative living alone, or anyone who relies on powered medical equipment.
Downed power lines: stay well away from any fallen or sagging line and anything it’s touching, and keep children and pets back. Assume it’s live. Get Prepared says don’t touch downed lines and report them to local officials. If anyone is in danger, call 911.
Around here, wind is the usual culprit. Lethbridge averages about 116 days a year with gusts of 40 km/h or more, and big gusts bring down branches and lines. When the forecast calls for a windstorm or a heavy, wet snow, charge everything and fill the car’s tank the day before.
Who to call
Who looks after your power depends on where you live.
| Where you live | Your wires company | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| City of Lethbridge | City of Lethbridge Electric | Check the City’s power outages page and its online outage map. The City says crews are dispatched automatically for unplanned outages, and the map can take up to 30 minutes to update. If your outage isn’t on the map after 30 minutes, check your neighbours and your main breaker. If you’ve been out for more than two hours, contact the City as its page explains. |
| Lethbridge County, and other areas FortisAlberta serves | FortisAlberta | Check your breaker first, then FortisAlberta’s outages page for the outage map and online reporting. You can also sign up there for outage alerts. |
| Not sure? | Check your bill | Your electricity bill names your wires company. Your retailer (the company that sells you the energy) may be different, and it doesn’t repair lines. |
Write your utility’s outage line on your household plan and keep it in your kit, because you may not have internet when you need it.
Never open or touch utility equipment such as transformers or meter boxes. FortisAlberta’s advice is blunt: don’t open anything. Your own main breaker is the only thing you should be switching.
Staying warm safely
Most modern gas furnaces need electricity to run, so in a winter outage the house starts cooling right away. A well-sealed house holds its heat for a while. Help it along:
- Close it up. The City of Lethbridge suggests keeping doors and window coverings closed. Pick one room to live in, ideally one with few windows, close the doors to the rest, and hang blankets over windows and doorways.
- Dress for it. Layers, wool socks, a toque indoors and a sleeping bag or extra blankets on the beds. Our what to wear page explains layering.
- Stay together. Everyone in one room stays warmer, and it’s easier to keep an eye on kids and older people.
- Eat and drink. Your body makes heat from food. Warm drinks help, if you can heat them safely.
- A natural gas fireplace can give you warmth until the power is back, according to Get Prepared.
- Watch for signs of cold injury, especially in babies, older adults and anyone unwell. Our first aid page covers hypothermia and frostbite.
Never use outdoor fuel-burning equipment to heat indoor spaces. That includes camp stoves, barbecues, patio heaters, generators and the car. Get Prepared also says not to use a gas stove as a heat source.
When to leave
Get Prepared says to be ready to leave if extreme cold, extreme heat, flooding or another hazard makes your home unsafe. The City of Lethbridge opens heating and cooling centres during extreme temperatures, and its preparing for an emergency page lists them. Staying with family or friends who have power is often the simplest answer.
If freezing pipes are a risk, Get Prepared suggests draining your plumbing. Know where your main water shut-off is before you need it.
In a cold snap, with or without power
Arctic air can sit over southern Alberta for days, and our wind piles snow against the house. Protect the house as well as the people:
- Keep outside vents clear. Get Prepared says to check outdoor exhaust vents often, so they stay clear of snow and ice, because dangerous levels of carbon monoxide can build up if a fuel-burning appliance’s vent is blocked. After a ground blizzard, check the furnace and water heater vents on the outside walls.
- Keep water moving. If your pipes can’t be kept above freezing while you still have heat, Get Prepared suggests running a trickle of water to keep them from freezing.
- Check on older relatives and neighbours. Get Prepared asks us to make sure they’re warm enough and have enough supplies when it’s cold or snowy.
- Keep babies and older adults warmest. Health Canada lists infants under one year and seniors 65 or older among those at higher risk in extreme cold. In a cold house, keep them in the warmest room, dressed in layers, and check on them often.
Cooking safely
You can eat well for three days without cooking at all. If you do want something hot:
- A natural gas stove can be used to cook during an outage, but not as a heat source, according to Get Prepared.
- Camp stoves, barbecues and portable burners are outdoor equipment. Get Prepared says to use them only outdoors, away from air intakes, doors and windows.
- An insulated bottle is your friend. Boil water once outdoors on the barbecue, fill an insulated bottle, and you have hot water for drinks and instant food for hours.
- Keep it simple. Canned stew, bread and peanut butter, crackers and cheese (while it’s still cold), fruit and granola bars.
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (CO) has no colour, no smell and no taste. Anything that burns fuel makes it: furnaces, stoves, barbecues, camp stoves, heaters, generators and vehicle engines. Many CO poisonings happen during outages, when people bring outdoor equipment inside to stay warm or cook.
Health Canada: never use a barbecue, camping stove or fuel-burning equipment in your home, garage or shed. Never use a fuel-powered generator indoors or in your garage or shed.
Get Prepared: never run outdoor fuel-burning equipment in a shed, garage, crawlspace or basement, even with doors and windows open. Don’t idle a vehicle in a garage to charge devices or warm up, even with the garage door open.
Alarms
- Health Canada says to install a certified CO alarm near bedrooms.
- Choose alarms with a battery or battery backup so they work in an outage, and test them. Get Prepared says to check that CO and smoke alarms work and to replace batteries as needed.
Know the signs
Health Canada lists tiredness, headaches and shortness of breath as mild symptoms. Severe poisoning causes loss of consciousness and can kill. Because the early signs feel like the flu, suspect CO if several people (or pets) in the house feel unwell at the same time, especially if they feel better outside.
If the alarm sounds
- Get everyone out into fresh air right away, including pets. Don’t stop to look for the source.
- Call 911 from outside.
- Don’t go back in until a qualified professional says it’s safe.
Gary’s outage story
When Gary’s kids were young, a winter power outage left their condo with no heat. The fireplace was no help. In his words, it was “junk, did nothing but suck heat out of the place.” The family moved into their large garage with the big door partly open, and a small camp stove kept them warm and fed until the power came back.
Today his truck carries extra batteries, a solar panel and an inverter, and he has three generators. He figures that within about 15 minutes he could have heat and some lights going in the house during a power failure. “We don’t often have power issues here,” he says, but he likes to be ready.
It worked out for them, but don’t copy the garage part. Today Health Canada’s advice is to never run a camp stove or any fuel-burning equipment in your home, garage or shed, and Get Prepared says that applies even with the doors and windows open. Carbon monoxide has no colour or smell, it can build up without warning, and it can seep into the house. Cook outdoors in the open air, well away from doors, windows and air intakes, or eat cold food. If the house is getting too cold, take everyone somewhere warm.
The lesson for the rest of us: plan your backup before the outage, not during it. Battery power, a generator run outdoors at least 6 m from the house, warm clothes and a place to go mean you never have to make a risky choice in a cold, dark house.
Generators
A generator can keep a fridge, a furnace fan, a sump pump or a medical device running. Used wrongly, it can kill. Get Prepared and Health Canada agree on the rules:
- Outdoors only, at least 6 m (20 feet) from any home or building. Never indoors, in a garage, a shed, a crawlspace or a basement.
- Point the exhaust away from open windows and doors, and close the windows and doors near the unit.
- Choose a model that shuts off automatically when carbon monoxide levels are high, if you’re buying a fuel-burning generator.
- Plug appliances directly into the generator, or use properly rated, CSA-approved extension cords.
- Never plug a generator into a wall outlet. It can send power back up the lines and kill a utility worker or a neighbour.
- Running a gas furnace from a generator. A furnace needs only a little power for its fan, igniter and controls, so a modest generator can keep the heat on. One approach some homeowners use is to have the furnace’s service switch replaced with a plug and receptacle, so in an outage the furnace can be unplugged from the house and plugged into a generator outdoors by a heavy-duty cord. Because the furnace is then disconnected from the house wiring, nothing can feed back into the power lines. In Alberta this is electrical work that needs a permit, so have an electrician do it or check with your local safety codes office first, and use an inverter generator or a clean power source, because furnace control boards are sensitive. It’s an idea Gary likes and plans to set up.
- A standby generator must connect to your home’s wiring only through an approved transfer panel and switch, installed by a qualified electrician. Get a licensed electrician’s advice before installing one.
- Follow the manufacturer’s instructions, and store fuel safely, away from the house.
Get Prepared notes that battery- or solar-powered portable power stations don’t produce carbon monoxide and can be used anywhere. For lights, phones, a radio and small devices, they’re a quiet, safe option. Check what your fridge or medical device draws before you count on one.
Wind here can push exhaust back toward the house. Place the generator downwind of your home when you can, check the forecast wind direction, and keep your CO alarms working whenever it runs.
Food safety in an outage
Health Canada recommends keeping your fridge at 4°C or colder and your freezer at -18°C or colder. Between 4°C and 60°C, bacteria grow quickly. In an outage, the goal is to keep the doors shut and the cold in.
Those times are from the Government of Prince Edward Island’s food safety advice. Get Prepared gives a range of 24 to 48 hours for a full freezer. Either way, every opening shortens it.
- Keep a thermometer in the fridge and the freezer, so you know the real temperature instead of guessing.
- Throw out food that has been above 4°C for 2 hours or more, or that has an unusual smell, colour or texture (PEI government advice).
- Refreezing: food that still has ice crystals or feels as cold as if it came from the fridge can be refrozen, according to the same PEI advice.
- When in doubt, throw it out. Health Canada says you can’t tell whether food is safe by its smell or taste. Never taste food to check.
- After the outage, Get Prepared says to check the food in your fridge, freezer and cupboards before eating anything.
Winter trick, with care: in a cold snap it’s tempting to put food outside. The trouble is that a sunny chinook afternoon can warm a cooler on the step well above 4°C, and animals find it. If you do it, use a closed cooler in the shade and check it with a thermometer.
A fridge is like a big lunch box with the ice pack built in. When the power goes off, the cold stays inside for a while, but only if the door stays shut.
Wonder: why would a full freezer stay cold longer than an almost-empty one?
Try this: put two cups of ice in the sun, one wrapped in a towel and one not. Which melts first? The towel works like a fridge door that stays closed.
Keeping phones and devices charged
In an outage, your phone is your flashlight, radio, news source and lifeline. Get Prepared suggests a battery pack that can charge your important devices several times, a crank or battery radio in case the internet goes down, and signing up for weather alerts.
- Keep power banks charged and stored with their cables. Top them up every few months.
- Use battery saver, lower the brightness and close apps you don’t need. Get Prepared suggests limiting phone use if you can’t charge.
- Text instead of calling when networks are busy.
- Charging in the car: only outdoors, in the open, and never in a garage, even with the door open. Keep the tank at least half full when an outage is likely, as Get Prepared suggests, or keep an electric vehicle charged.
- A battery or crank radio keeps you in touch with local news if the cell network or internet is down.
Medical devices and medications
If someone in your home depends on electricity for their health, an outage is a medical issue, not an inconvenience. Get Prepared says:
- Ask your doctor how your conditions may be affected by an outage, and plan for critical medications.
- Make a power outage plan for medical devices powered by electricity, and for medications that need refrigeration.
- Make sure any medical alert system you use works without power.
- Keep a list of nearby facilities that provide life-sustaining equipment or treatment.
- Plan an evacuation route that doesn’t need an elevator.
The Alberta Emergency Management Agency’s seniors toolkit adds: contact your equipment provider about emergency options, consider backup power if the need is essential, and make sure the people in your plan know how to use your devices.
What it means for you: find out how long the battery in each device really lasts, write it on the device, and plan to move to a place with power well before it runs out. In an emergency, call 911.
When the power comes back
- Wait a few minutes to let the system stabilize. The City of Lethbridge suggests about 15 minutes before turning up the thermostat or plugging in appliances.
- Turn the heat up first, then reconnect the fridge and freezer. Get Prepared says to wait 10 to 15 minutes before plugging in other appliances.
- Check the hot water tank is full before turning its power back on.
- Check your food before eating anything.
- Turn off generators and any temporary heaters.
- If the basement flooded, stay out and have an electrician check things before using power there. The City warns that water may have reached electrical equipment.
- Restock your kit, and recharge every power bank.
Sources
- Public Safety Canada, Power outages: how to prepare (before, during and after; generators; heating; cooking; carbon monoxide; food; medical devices): canada.ca
- Public Safety Canada, Winter storms: how to prepare (keep outdoor exhaust vents clear of snow and ice): canada.ca
- Public Safety Canada, Extreme cold: how to prepare (a trickle of water; checking on older adults): canada.ca
- Health Canada, Extreme cold (who is at higher risk): canada.ca
- Health Canada, Infographic: Carbon monoxide: canada.ca
- Health Canada, Safe food storage (fridge 4°C, freezer -18°C; when in doubt, throw it out): canada.ca
- Government of Prince Edward Island, Food safety during a power outage (fridge about 4 hours, freezer about 48 or 24 hours; 2-hour rule; refreezing): princeedwardisland.ca
- City of Lethbridge, Power outages: lethbridge.ca
- City of Lethbridge, Preparing for an emergency (heating and cooling centres): lethbridge.ca
- FortisAlberta, Outages: fortisalberta.com
- FortisAlberta, During an outage: fortisalberta.com
- Alberta Emergency Management Agency, Emergency Preparedness Toolkit for seniors (2021): open.alberta.ca
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Climate Normals 1991–2020, Lethbridge (about 116 days a year with gusts of 40 km/h or more).