Cranberry Portage under evacuation order Saturday
Cranberry Portage has been put under a mandatory evacuation order due to wildfire-damaged hydro lines that are expected to keep the community dark for multiple days.
The rural municipality of Kelsey issued an emergency bulletin at 8:26 a.m. Saturday. The RM has been asking area residents to prepare emergency kits and evacuation plans throughout the week.
'This fire is currently established on both sides of Highway #10 north of Sturgeon Landing turn off and South of Egg Lake. Multiple Hydro poles are damaged and burnt,' Lori Forbes, municipal emergency coordinator for the region, wrote in an alert at 8:26 a.m. Saturday.
Forbes said Hydro had determined power would be out for an extended period. A mandatory evacuation plan was put in place as of 9 a.m. in response to the sweeping outage. Evacuees are headed to Winnipeg.
RCMP is helping notify area residents who are asked to visit Billy Mosienko Arena in Winnipeg.
Evacuees are being urged to travel via Highway 39 and Highway 6, as Highway 10 remains closed. It's an approximately 7 1/2 hour drive to the Manitoba capital.
'It's still an area of active wildfires, so we can't safely access the area to assess damage or estimate when power could be restored,' said Peter Chura, a media relations officer for Manitoba Hydro.
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Hydro's outage map shows 478 customers have been affected in Cranberry Portage. The outage was reported at 2:43 a.m.
maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca
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Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie.
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