A Natural Gas Pipeline Exploded Near Winnipeg and Left Thousands Without Power

Raw footage from the aftermath of the pipeline explosion.

The massive explosion of a TransCanada natural gas pipeline Saturday night south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, has left some 4000 homes and possibly hundreds of livestock operations without heat over a weekend where temperatures dropped to -32 by Monday morning, with a windchill of -45.

The explosion, which reportedly sent balls of fire streaming “200 to 300 meters high,” took place around 1am on Saturday near the community of Otterburne, and burned until the early afternoon, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents and cutting off the flow of natural gas needed by Manitoba Hydro customers in ten rural communities south of Winnipeg. The blast, which is the sixth such gas pipeline explosion in Manitoba since 1994, and the fourth on a TransCanada pipeline in the province since 1995, also impacted the thousands more Xcel Energy customers in North Dakota, Minnesota, and western Wisconsin.

While the explosion only hit one of two pipelines supplying the area, the CBC reported that “TransCanada had to shut off the gas supply to the second pipeline as a safety precaution in order to effect repairs to the damaged pipeline.” The RCMP do not believe the explosion is any way suspicious, and TransCanada are working to identify the cause of the fire.

Despite the bitter cold and highway closures from blowing snow across Manitoba, the people in the affected communities are pulling together to keep warm while Hydro and TransCanada scramble to restore service.

“This town’s pretty resilient,” said Bryan Trottier, an electrical contractor from Niverville, MB. Trottier said he and his crew have been busy since early Saturday morning, wiring electric heaters into otherwise heatless homes, either to keep residents warm or to keep pipes from freezing and bursting. According to Trottier, the challenge lies in “giving people enough heat to keep their house barely warm enough to live in. My own house has been dropping about a degree a day […] With all this extra load we have to watch the main hydro line.”

Official emergency shelters and warming stations have been set up by local municipalities in the towns of Niverville, New Bothwell, Grunthal, Ritchot, and Ste. Agathe.Trottier also said that neighbouring communities have been quick to open their homes.

“There’s tons of people offering up houses and apartments,” Trottier told me. “I had a person in a neighbouring community phone me and say they had two empty apartments and we were welcome to use them.”

The area affected by the explosion is a hotbed for livestock production in the province. Local farmers are also feeling the cold as hundreds of hog, chicken, and dairy barns have had their heat supply cut off, according to the Western Producer. TransCanada executive VP and president of natural gas pipelines Karl Johannson said that compensation would be provided to farmers for loss of livestock. Compensation could also be provided for damage to property from the blast, as well as cost of space heaters and hotel stays over the course of the outage.

Schools throughout the affected rural municipalities were closed Monday due to a lack of heat. An official statement from Manitoba Hydro Monday morning read that “TransCanada Corporation is advising Manitoba Hydro that work to bypass the damaged section of their pipeline is progressing” but that “the work has been challenging and further complicated by extreme freezing temperatures and high winds.”

Johannson told a press conference in Ile des Chenes, Manitoba, Monday afternoon that TransCanada “simply don’t know” the cause of Saturday’s explosion. While testing is still ongoing, he told reporters that “instances like this aren’t common” and that the age of the pipeline, despite being 50 years old, was not believed to be an issue in the explosion. According to Johannson, the pipeline had last been internally inspected in 2009, and had been “in very good condition” at that time. He also did not believe that the cold weather was a factor, though he conceded the Arctic temperatures posed their own problems to restoration of service.

“We build our pipelines so that they are up and available this time of year,” Johannson told reporters. “So this concerns us greatly.”

TransCanada Corp are behind the push to build the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed, 1,897 km pipeline that would move oil sands crude from Alberta to refineries in Nebraska. The proposal has the OK of the Canadian government, but is opposed by environmentalists, and is currently being stalled by pissed off farmers in Nebraska, despite the hyper-inflated cash incentives TransCanada is offering. The Obama administration is expected to make a decision on whether to OK the pipeline in the coming months.

TransCanada Corp is Manitoba’s primary natural gas supplier. The company maintains five natural gas pipelines that come into Manitoba from the west, and three that move southeast into the United States, as well as one of two oil pipelines crossing the southern part of the province. Enbridge—whose aging Line 9 pipeline in eastern Canada has thousands of “crack-like features,” according to the company’s own reports—operates the other one.

While some houses are already going back online, Johannson estimated that most natural gas service would be restored over Monday night and into Tuesday afternoon, At that time, Manitoba Hydro workers will have to go door-to-door to relight pilot lights that they extinguished Saturday morning. Yesterday it was revealed that natural gas in Otterburne had been restored, with over 15,000 Manitoban homes set to regain power in the next 48 hours. Lee Spencer, the acting executive director of the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization stressed community in this time of chaos, cold, and confusion. "We're entering into the 48-hour window and there is still a day or two maybe to go in this crisis," he said. "We ask neighbours to look in on their neighbours. We all think of the person that we know who may be elderly and we've always considered to be self sufficient and independent. Make sure they have warmth, they have food and they understand how they can get support." @badguybirnie