Essex Powerlines too slow notifying residents of six-hour outage, says LaSalle man

A LaSalle, Ont., resident says he’s not happy with how long it took for Essex Powerlines to provide details on a recent outage that left nearly 1,000 properties without power.

Power went out for 952 customers throughout LaSalle just before 9 p.m. Saturday, according to Essex Powerlines. The outage lasted about six hours, with power having been restored for most residents by 3 a.m.

But for Sherif El-Messiri, his issue isn’t how long the outage lasted. Instead, he takes issue with how long it took before he was able to read any information about the outage from Essex Powerlines’ website or social media accounts.

At the time of the outage, El-Messiri said, he had been visiting his mother in the U.S.

“My family asked me to come home right away,” El-Messiri told CTV News on Sunday.

“I started search for the Essex Powerlines information [online]. I searched Twitter. There was nothing.”

Despite the outage being declared at 8:53 p.m., it wasn’t until 9:42 p.m. that Essex Powerlines published its first Tweet about it.

During the almost one-hour interval, multiple residents tell CTV News they were unable to access the official website for Essex Powerlines.

“I went to the website and the website was down. The website wouldn't even load,” he said.

“When you have an incident that impacts the service you provide to your customers, you need to communicate that outage to your customer base immediately. That's the minimum they can do.

Despite Saturday night's outage in LaSalle being declared at 8:53 p.m., Essex Powerlines did not issue its first Tweet about it until 9:42 p.m. Multiple residents tell CTV News they were unable to access the energy company's official website as an alternative source of information since it was down throughout that time. Essex Powerlines says its website was down 'intermittently' for just 10 minutes. (Source: Twitter)According to officials with Essex Powerlines, data from its IT department shows the energy company’s website was down “intermittently” for just 10 minutes — but the reason why is unclear.

“Our IT department has indicated that this had nothing to do with the amount of traffic on the website due to the outage,” said Essex Powerlines general manager Joe Barile in a statement to CTV News.

“Our IT department is continuing to investigate further.”

But fellow town resident Nikki LeBlanc said, in her experience, Essex Powerlines’ website was down for nearly the entirety of the first hour of the outage.

“Based on when I tried to access the site at the time of outage and my tweet to Essex Powerlines being sent approximately 50 minutes later, it was down longer than 10 minutes,” she said.

Details of Saturday night's outage in LaSalle is listed on the official website for Essex Powerlines. As of Sunday afternoon, the cause is listed as 'unknown.' (Source: essexpowerlines.ca)Last month, Essex Powerlines released a six-point action plan after scattered outages occurred throughout LaSalle in a single day.

The actions included the redirection of tree trimming services, undertaking infrared inspections of high-risk outage spots and the installation of animal guards to protect infrastructure.

When asked about the success of the plan since it was implemented on Jul. 19, Essex Powerlines said most tasks have been completed while others are still pending.

“We continue to monitor the results of these efforts which, to date, have indicated positive results,” said Barile.

As of Sunday afternoon, Essex Powerlines' website continues to list the cause of Saturday night’s outage as "unknown."