Piney, Lac du Bonnet criticize the lack of cell coverage during wildfires

The RMs of Piney and Lac du Bonnet criticized cell service providers for failing to provide proper coverage during the wildfires that swept their municipalities in May and are still burning.

“The cell phone coverage is a very sensitive issue in our neck of the woods,” said Coun. Mark Bernard. “In the RM of Piney, we lack service in many of our communities. There’s Sprague, South Junction, Vassar just to name a few and of course it’s very spotty even in Woodridge, Badger, and Carrick – it’s very spotty. It causes a lot of grief for security, for safety also for communication for outside the community.”

Although the fire in Piney is now classified as being held, when it was out of control, firefighters and other emergency personnel would have difficulty communicating with their cell phones. Luckily, the RM had just upgraded its radio system that was used by fire services battling the blaze.

Bernard said the RM wants to send out alerts to residents when there is a fire and evacuation order is given, but because of “poor or non-existent cell coverage” it makes it impossible to do so.

“It’s very frustrating. It’s been ongoing. We have been trying to get talks with Bell and they more or less ignore us. We go through AMM and they just get stonewalled (by Bell) because they say there’s not enough population. They blame it on customers – it’s a profit issue which we’re saying it’s a safety issue,” he said.

The fires in Piney and Lac du Bonnet have been burning since mid-May and have consumed 9,000 hectares and 5,410 hectares, respectively. Four structures have been lost in Piney and 28 homes and two deaths were seen in Lac du Bonnet.

Lac du Bonnet Reeve Loren Schinkel said the municipality has been lobbying for cellphone coverage throughout the eastern district and in the Lac du Bonnet area to end dead zones and drop zones, especially to the north as the location of the cell towers makes reception sketchy.

Speaking in broad terms, Schinkel said, “You have no cellphone communication at all so when you have a fire going, you actually have to send people from the fire zone out to communicate with other first responders who are coming into an area. So, there’s these dead zones that not only impact the fire capability of the firefighting side of it, but also outright the public and first responders’ safety.”

Bell, which owns the towers in Piney and Lac du Bonnet, issued a statement saying they are working to mitigate the effects of the wildfires on their network.

“Our priority during the difficult past couple of weeks is to maintain our public safety network and support our first responders. Our teams work closely with the Province of Manitoba’s Emergency Management Organization and provide updates to numerous government officials, and their offices.

“In addition, during the wildfires we had members of our teams on site around the clock at our cell towers in areas affected by wildfires to ensure emergency services lines remained connected and to keep services active for customers, and we also provided free data for evacuated customers.”