Manitoba Hydro is still busy after the Thanksgiving Winter Storm that knocked down and damaged so many poles in our region.

Hydro spokesman Bruce Owen says they had to replace 4,000 poles.

Photo was taken Thursday by Manitoba Hydro. As of Thursday, they had GPS’d approximately 1,840 poles in the Portage area. They also nailed new bar code tags on poles that came from other utilities outside of Manitoba (approx. 203), like this one. The bar codes identify the pole; it’s exact location and age. They also take photos of each pole which are viewable in heir internal GIS system. This information is valuable for them to track their assets, and to get a lay of the land (ditches, swamps etc.) where each pole is located, so they can better track wood pole maintenance and replacement. "People who go up to, and look at one of our utility poles, will notice that there is a barcode on it," says Owen. "That's the process we're doing now. We're identifying the poles that were replaced, entering them into our GIS location mapping system, and putting a barcode on it. Essentially, we're baptizing the pole as one of our own."

He says they have been working in the Portage area.

"We've identified or barcoded 1,700 poles so far, and in the next few days, or the next week, we'll be moving into the Arborg and Ashern area, doing the same type of work," says Owen.

The process began a few weeks ago, and they hope they can be done by Christmas.

Owen notes the poles that came in from Saskatchewan have a QR code on the poles, which is how that province tracks their information. He reminds us that Manitoba Hydro does things differently.

"We use a barcode system to identify our poles. Some poles have no identification marks on them whatsoever," says Owen. "We have to enter that pole into our mapping system and put a barcode on it. That barcode tells us the exact location of that pole, plus its history."

He says once this process is done, every pole in the province will have a barcode on it, totalling more than one million poles in all.