As the clean-up continues across the province from the windstorm that wreaked havoc Tuesday afternoon, and overnight into Wednesday morning, power is slowly being restored in many communities.

SaskPower has crews out working on getting the repairs made, but in some cases, are waiting for conditions to allow the work.

Jonathan Tremblay with SaskPower explained the amount of territory they need to cover is large.

“It’s really been the entire bottom 50 percent of the province,” he explained. “It’s outages from Estevan to Prince Albert to Maple Creek. The wind is still definitely there, especially in the east side of the province this morning.”

The work is being done on a priority basis, with priority given to power for emergency facilities such as hospitals, as well as water treatment facilities. Crews are also working to repair lines in areas which have been damaged by fire, in particular in the west part of the province, where communities were evacuated as a precaution.

A number of downed power lines and trees falling into power lines were responsible for many of the outages, including ones in Weyburn. Tremblay explained with the repair and clean-up efforts, the public can help as well.

“For downed power lines, call us or 911,” he explained. “If you have an outage, give us a call at our outage center. That’s 310-2220. That certainly helps us localize where the issue might be, where the downed power line might be, where the tree on the line might be.”

Tremblay adds to treat all downed power lines as though they are live, trying to stay ten meters away.