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COLIN MACLEAN: An important moment for Summerside

What comes next, after the fire is out?

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It’s one of many questions that have been on my mind as I’ve watched the lithium-ion batteries burn at Sunbank.

It’s also something I recently asked Deputy Mayor Cory Snow, the city’s de facto leader until the next municipal election on Nov. 2.

He broke it down into, essentially, short-, medium- and long-term concerns.

Short-term has been getting the fire out. As I’m writing these words, that process was still underway and has been for nine days, since the fire was first detected on Sept. 7.

Medium-term will be the cleanup; finding out the fire’s cause, remediating the site, assessing any related infrastructure damage and getting Summerside Electric back to some semblance of normal.

The long-term problem is figuring out how to ensure Summerside has enough electricity to get through the winter. The batteries at Sunbank had been in regular use for less than two years but had already become an important part of the juggling act of resources Summerside Electric performs to provide power to its customers.

The cost of this incident must also be calculated: not only to fix what is broken, but also what........

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