Federal officials are en route to northwestern Alberta to investigate a plane crash that killed a pilot and took out power around Fort Vermilion, RCMP say.
The crash, reported to Fort Vermilion RCMP at 8 p.m. MT Saturday, happened in a field near Township Road 1090 and Range Road 152, tens of kilometres northwest of Fort Vermilion, a hamlet about 560 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, according to a news release RCMP issued late Saturday night.
First responders found the pilot, the only person in the plane, dead at the scene, police said. RCMP did not report other casualties.
As of Saturday night, Mounties were holding the scene for Transport Safety Board of Canada (TSB) investigators, police said.
The TSB, which did not immediately respond to CBC News’ request for information, examines transportation incidents to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Its investigations do not assign blame and its findings cannot be used in legal or disciplinary findings — although coroners and medical examiners can use findings in their own investigations.
The crash “affected power to all homes and several rural areas” in the area, police said.
ATCO Electric, which powers much of rural Alberta, sent crews to the area Saturday night after learning an “emergency incident” caused damage to the transmission line serving La Crête, Alta., and the surrounding area, according to company social media posts. La Crête is just southwest of Fort Vermilion.
More than 3,800 customers were affected by three outages in the area as of Sunday morning. Each outage started at 8:10 p.m. MT Saturday, according to the company’s outage map.
ATCO Electric expects power to be restored by late Sunday afternoon.