It may have been a good time to have a generator otherwise you had to wait out the planned seven-hour power outage that took place recently in Fort Frances. Residents planned accordingly, however, as an auto dialer was used to let people know about the upcoming situation. 

Electricity in the town was scheduled to be out from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to a recent article. However, 3,700 Hydro One customers west of town were without power from 8 to 8:30 a.m. and if that wasn’t enough of a reminder as to what it was like before air conditioning, power went out again from 5 to 5:30 p.m., Nancy Shaddick, a spokeswoman for Hydro One said in a statement.

“In that area, there are 511 customers that are going to be out from 8-11 a.m., as well,” she added.

East of Fort Frances, an additional 1,000 customers were without power from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

 “Hydro One has tried to contact our customers through an auto dialer to let them know about the outage,” said Shaddick. “This work is very important for repairs and to change fuses at a distribution station,” she explaine.

Auto dialers are extremely helpful in situations such as this, when many residents need to be alerted quickly of an important issue. CallFire, a provider of auto dialer technology can help get emergency warnings out right away including messages related to weather, resource information such as where food and shelter are located, long term utility outages (just like in this example), missing children, fleeing suspects or other police-related matters and evacuation notification.