Hundreds of thousands of people were without power as SaskPower deals with an extremely large system failure.

The lights went out at about 9 am here in Moose Jaw with reports coming in from across southern Saskatchewan. Power was since restored in Moose Jaw shortly before 3 pm but remains out in a number of communities. 

SaskPower says their call centre has been flooded with outage reports and they're working to fix the situation as quickly as they can but they haven't provided any specifics. Officials are using the SaskPower Twitter page to try and keep everyone up to date but there have been indications that this could be a major issue.

"We don’t have an estimated restoration time yet. And, power could be out for an extended period of time," stated SaskPower on their blog page. "Our crews are working hard to safely assess and correct the problem."

While there was a planned outage for south of Moose Jaw, officials say this outage has nothing to do with that work. Some small areas have had their service restored while many others wonder when things will get back to normal.

The Prairie South School Division announced on their Facebook page that classes are going ahead as best they can and the City of Moose Jaw has issued the following statement.

The City of Moose Jaw advises that while Sask Power works on a solution to this power outage: - all City-owned indoor recreation facilities, including Kinsmen Sportsplex and Yara Centre, are closed - City Hall reception/payment centre is currently open - Traffic lights are not working and crews are creating 4-way stops with temporary stop signs at major intersections. If you approach an intersection without working lights or temporary stop signs, drivers are asked to exercise caution and obey "right-of-way" rules

As of late Tuesday afternoon city officials announced that the public swim at 7 pm at the Kinsmen Sportsplex would resume and ice times would also return to normal. 

Statement from the U of R before students hit the highways
Due to the extended power outage, the University of Regina is canceling all day and evening classes at the main campus and College Avenue Campus and closing offices. Watch our official Twitter and uregina.ca for updates.

However, both the Moose Jaw and Regina campuses for Saskatchewan Polytechnic remained open during Tuesday's outage. 

We have also received word that the Town and Country Mall will be closed for the day due to the power outage. All employees were sent home as of 11 am.