Mendenhall residents deserve assurances that everything possible is being done to stabilize their electrical service, says the president of the community association.

Toyia Chakungal said Thursday Yukon Energy has known for at least five years that the transformer feeding the neighbourhood is too small.

Having a 14-hour outage last spring when temperatures were not punishing was one thing, she said.

Having a prolonged outage last weekend as the mercury fell below -30 C is something else altogether, Chakungal said, particularly when the publicly owned utility knew it had issues feeding the community.

"One of my neighbours still doesn't have running water,” she said of the pipes that froze with no electricity to power the heat tape.

Chakungal said many in the neighbourhood heat by wood, but not all.

One elderly couple entirely dependent on grid power to provide the comforts of home eventually reached a point where they couldn't even start their vehicles, she said.

Chakungal said she uses cordless phones, and when the power goes out, so does her phone, along with her ability to contact emergency services if she had to.

Two of the homes in the community west of Whitehorse were without power for almost 30 hours, from 11:20 p.m. Saturday until 4 a.m. Monday, the association president pointed out.

Chakungal is in discussions with Yukon Energy spokeswoman Janet Patterson to arrange a meeting between utility officials and Mendenhall residents.

"I think the biggest thing I personally would like to see coming from that is some form of acknowledgment they knew about this for a while and something is going to be done, and something is going to be done sooner rather that later.”

She said Yukon Energy has said it could take up to a year to get a suitably sized transformer to replace the transformer it installed Wednesday as a temporary measure.

That transformer is the same size as the one that failed last Saturday.

Yukon Energy plans to keep a mobile diesel generator operational in the community to assist with the power supply, Chakungal explained.

Yukon Energy, she said, could have and should have been more proactive in addressing the problem.

Yukon Energy's spokeswoman said 15 customers had power restored three hours after the outage at 2:20 a.m. Sunday.

Another 18 were back on at 3:40 a.m., and 95 per cent of the community was restored by 4:38 p.m. Sunday.

Four mobile generators were used to supply the power needs, Patterson said.

Patterson explained Yukon Energy is currently shopping around for a larger transformer, but it's not a piece of equipment one buys off the shelf.

The public utility did have a transformer in stock that was the same size as the one which failed, so it was installed, she said.

Patterson said the replacement transformer along with a mobile generator will be used to serve the community until Yukon Energy can secure a larger transformer.