GOOD WORKS
After the Slave Lake fire, the company did 2,400 relights over a few weeks. In Fort McMurray, staff did 20,000, including 3,200 in one day. And that major gate station that burned down? It was rebuilt in four months. “There were a lot of firsts for us as an organization,” says Mr. Carter. “We’d give the team what would seem like a fairly impossible target, and they kept meeting or exceeding it.” Members of that team included ATCO Electric employees faced with a separate daunting challenge: keeping power flowing to support critical emergency services. POWER TO THE PROTECTORS Gurb Hari, P.Eng., had visited Fort McMur- ray plenty of times before the fire, having spent five years supporting electric projects in the community. But he wasn’t sure what to expect when he arrived from Edmonton to support emergency operations. “The experience was surreal,” says Mr. Hari, Supervising Engineer for ATCO Electric’s Northeast Region. “To see the city completely empty felt like a scene from a movie. Air quality was poor, especially early on, so not only was the city empty but every- one outside was wearing a ventilation mask.” He ended up spending most of May in Fort McMurray, working with other key stakeholders to identify critical sites requir- ing electrical service. While ATCO turned off the natural gas during the crisis, electricity was left on — when safe — to provide power for critical infrastructure needed to battle the fires. This included the emergency centre, fire halls, water lift stations, reservoirs, and pumping stations, as well as the cell and radio towers that allowed first responders to communicate. In some cases, this meant restoring damaged structures while the city was still threatened by fire. More than 30 critical loads in the community and surrounding areas were identified. “Priorities were set to attempt A PICTURE OF DEVASTATION One of the hard-hit areas of Fort McMurray, a neighbourhood in Abasand, offers a graphic depiction of the extremes of damage done in Fort McMurray. Natural gas and electrical service, of course, had to be addressed immediately. -photo courtesy Keith Diakiw, P.Geo.
safe, crews also visited every house in the city to do visual assessments. That work took about a week to finish. It also took a week to confirm that Suncor’s high pressure gas line was safe to turn back on. Adding to the challenge: no one knew when residents would be allowed to re- turn. Would it be three days, or three weeks? “As a company, we didn’t want to delay recovery or safe re-entry for residents,” says Mr. Germaine. It would take a team of engineers, technicians, and other staff to tackle a seemingly overwhelming task: the biggest natural gas restoration project ATCO had ever undertaken. THE PURGE ATCO typically brings about 20,000 new gas customers online every year. In Fort McMurray, 20,000 homes and businesses needed to be brought back online ASAP. Before service could be restored, gas lines needed to be purged to ensure there was no air in the system. To purge a sys- tem, gas is flowed through the pipelines to push out the air. This is done at various end points in the system, usually at homes or gate stations. Service valves had to be shut off at all homes and businesses. ATCO suspected there would be mostly gas in the pipes with only a small amount of air. “What we found was a lot of air and a little bit of gas. Which meant the entire system had to be purged,” says Mr. Carter. But crews couldn’t just start opening valves.
A team of Professional Engineers from within the company was called upon to create a set of procedures to guide the project in a safe and coordinated manner. They were tasked with finding the most effective purge points and determining how long each purge should last. After crunching the numbers, they identified upwards of 1,500 purge points across the city. “We had a small army of dedicated engineers in Edmonton working on these plans, which took them quite a number of days. Early on, they worked through the night to get the first ones completed, so we could begin,” says Mr. Germaine. Crews on the ground — about 150 people in field operations — were also working non-stop to execute the plans. Initially, the company expected the project would take several weeks. They got it done in 10 days. Engineering teams also designed alterations to the city’s natural gas system to isolate heavily impacted neighbourhoods, so the company could bring service back to all remaining customers. By May 17 — just two weeks after the mass evacuation — natural gas service had been restored to about 50 per cent of the city. By June 1, service was restored to all customers allowed to return as part of a phased re-entry plan. But there were more hurdles. When people began returning, ATCO Gas employ- ees had to visit homes and stores to turn gas valves back on, complete safety inspec- tions, and relight appliances.
52 | PEG WINTER 2016
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