Businesses near Manitoba pipeline blast struggle with losses

Slowly, natural gas has been flowing back into southeast Manitoba communities affected by a weekend pipeline explosion, but some businesses say the damage has already been done from lack of gas for days.

About 4,000 natural gascustomers lost their gas supply after a section of pipelineexplodedat about 1 a.m. CT Saturday nearOtterburne, 50 kilometres south of Winnipeg.

Officials withTransCanadaPipelines are investigating the rupture and say they still don't know what caused it.

In the meantime, they havecreated a bypass to restore the gas service.

More than 100 contractors with TransCanadaPipelines, which owns the line,worked in shifts through the night Monday into Tuesday to excavateand remove the ruptured section and repairan adjacent line that was damaged.

Service has now been restored to people in Ste.Agathe,Niverville, NewBothwell,Kleefeld,OtterburneandMarchand communities north of the damaged section of pipeline, according to Manitoba Hydro.

Hydro crews are going door-to-door in those communitiesto make sure gas is restored properly and relightpilot lights if needed.

People south of the rupture, in the Rural Municipality ofDeSalaberrySt.Malo, St.Pierre-Jolys,GrunthalandDufrost should expect to have their gas service backby Tuesday.

Overnight temperatures have dropped to35 C and daytime highs have struggled to reach20C.But with theextreme wind chill values, it felt more like45.

Many people have been finding other ways to keep warm, relying for the most part on electric heaters.

Schools remain closed

At least three schools planned to remain closed for Tuesday because they still didnt have gas.

Manitoba Hydro has restricted the re-connection of the main gas supply to larger commercial buildings in a number of communities.

Officials want to be sure the gas lines can handle the demand, so some schools are still on a temporary gas supply.

cole St.Malo School, cole Hritage Immersion and Institute Collegial St. Pierre will all remain closed.

School officials said they would reassess on Tuesday, and reopening would depend on whether the main gas supply was back.

Bad for businesses

For some, there's been a big impact on their business.

Joe Gagne's family owns the St. Pierre-Jolys bakery and has had to tell his 17 employees not to come into work for the past three days.

"We can't pay them so all of my employees are all off. I mean, they can't work because we don't have any work," he said.

Our ovens and everything runwith gas. So we can't do nothing. We can't bake anything."

Gagne says the bakery could lose up to $10,000 because it hasnt been able to operate.

About 25 restaurants they supply will again be without bread and sweets today.

Ivan Balenovic, president and CEO of Bothwell Cheese, which is located in New Bothwell, said it's too early to say exactly how much the gas outage has cost him but its certainly substantial.

We've had two down days that we're not going to be able to make up. The losses will be in the tens of thousands, for sure, he said.

We're having our CFO look at it and crunch the numbers right now to see where we're at.

On the positive side of things, the extreme cold weather means his milk is lasting longer than it would otherwise.

TrevorSchriemer, who operates greenhouses in the area, estimates he has spent $30,000in extra heating bills since the gas service was lost.

He has been using back-up diesel boilers, which he said arevery expensive and labour intensive.

"I've had my son working in the boiler room for the last three days.No sleep. Just to maintain as much heat as we can coax out of the boilers," he said. "We don't get as much heat out of diesel as we get out of natural gas."

He said he would lose all his produce if his greenhouses go without heat for just half an hour.

Schriemer hopes to have his gas service back on tonight.