(Dtfoxfoto/Dreamstime.com)

By Ben Tompkins

Widespread Wildfires

“It’s unprecedented”: SaskPower reflects on impact, damage caused by wildfires to date

Aug 8, 2025 | 12:08 PM

This year’s wildfire season has been a long one and is still going on in lots of northern parts of the province.

The effects and issues caused by the wildfires have been immeasurable, and according to SaskPower, it’s something they’ve never experienced.

“This year’s wildfire season started earlier than normal, especially the fires that were occurring in the northeast. Simply just the scale geographically and the amount of damage, it’s unprecedented, to be frank. We’ve never experienced, at least in recent memory, any sort of wildfire situation that has had such a widespread impact on our infrastructure,” spokesperson Scott McGregor told northeastNOW.

“Thankfully, though, as the fires were pushed back and extinguished around our equipment, we were able to repair our damaged infrastructure and get customers restored… as for the fires in the northwest now, I don’t want to take anything away from the seriousness and severity of those fires, but thankfully, most of them are not burning near our infrastructure.”

While final numbers as far as lost power poles and damage costs are not yet finalized, as it is an ongoing situation, McGregor stated that roughly 300 pieces of equipment were lost in the northeast, most of those being power poles.

Riderville

The Time has Come

1h ago

Break-and-enter

RCMP in Melfort looking for suspects behind theft near Crystal Springs

19h ago

Residential development

City of Melfort hopes streamlining policies and other tools helps to spur residential development

21h ago

So far, roughly a dozen power poles have been damaged or destroyed in the northwest region.

According to McGregor, most of the time, it will just be sections of a line that are damaged due to fires, rather than the entire line becoming compromised.

He also said that there hasn’t been any significant damage yet at a substation or switching station.

When SaskPower has had to go into areas to restore damaged infrastructure, they have worked very closely with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, making sure it’s safe to do so and closely monitoring numerous situations.

“We have had some outages related to wildfires, but we were able to address those outages as quickly as we could, and safety is our top priority. Our main focus when a fire goes through an area with some of our power lines is to conduct a thorough damage assessment, just to get a clear picture of what needs to be fixed, and then when it’s safe to do so, we send our crews in to repair or replace the damaged equipment,” McGregor added.

“Our SaskPower crews and the contractors that we work with to restore, rebuild and repair damaged infrastructure, what can you say about them? They are actively going into really, just the worst conditions you can imagine, so my hat’s off to them. The professionalism and dedication that they have shown during this wildfire season are exemplary. I couldn’t imagine doing that job, it takes a special kind of person, and I’m glad that we have those people on our crews.”

McGregor concluded his thoughts by telling the public that if anyone comes across a downed power line or a damaged power pole, they should keep back a safe distance of at least 10 meters and call either 911 or the SaskPower outage centre at 306-310-2220.

He also said that any customers who’ve been impacted by wildfires and are looking for information about their accounts or what to do in the event they need to sign up for a new service because the old one was burned up, SaskPower has a natural disaster information line.

You can call the normal SaskPower line at 1-888-727-6937, select option four and then option eight, which will get you through to a special team that’s dedicated to natural disaster information.

–

Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On X @BenTompkins_8