By guest blogger Kevin Mugford, director of residential services in Buckland campus
Saskatchewan was treated to some intense storm weather that caused power outages this June. In particular, the Prince Albert region experienced a major power outage, lasting over a day.
The wind, lightning and overall weather was wild for hours on the evening of Monday June 25, 2012. By Tuesday morning out entire campus had no power, no lights, no refrigeration, no toilets, no showers etc etc etc. It looked like it would be 48 hours before power would be restored so we started to get in crisis mode. That is when the teamwork went into full gear!
Our campus is home to 30 youth and staff which would be enough of a worry with no services but there was another event looming - on June 26th Buckland campus was scheduled to host a board meeting.
The Regina Board and vice presidents were already on route for a noon meeting and by mid morning we lost phone service ( now board members could not even call in for the meeting) and our caterer informed us there would be no lunch. Also there was no lights in the horse riding arena where we were hosting the meeting.
I was able to track down Marion, the Ranch CEO and President, in Melfort and she said “ No problem, we can make this work!"
She was right. We moved the meeting to Klassen House near the windows for light, the Klassen youth packed up and headed to the lake for a fun day of swimming, Klassen housemom and our administrative assistant whipped up a basic lunch, and our maintenance person Chris brought a flash light and a bucket of water for people to use the washroom.
Ha Ha, no, they did not “ go" in the bucket, they poured water in the back of the toilet tank so they could flush! Marion was right - “No problem". Those that had to use the washroom did and the board meeting proceeded as planned. Oh, we finished in the arena with an riding lesson with the board without lights. So Thank You to the arena staff for that!
Folks headed back to Regina mid afternoon and then we had to figure out how to handle the youth for the upcoming evening in the dark! The vice presidents stopped at our Corman Park Campus outside of Saskatoon to tip off staff that we would need help and the Corman crew went to work. They were awesome! They arranged for sleeping quarters, support staffing, recreation options for the youth, shower facilities, snack, breakfast etc etc etc!
In the meantime our maintenance guy Chris and Corman’s Brent were outside in the wind and rain trying to set up a large generator in Buckland. They were fabulous and they eventually got power to Alex Guy House and just in time for us to save a lot of refrigerated food. Way to go Chris and Brent!!!
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, to everyone who helped us out! What a storm.
