on a january winter night 45 thousand households in south edmonton were left in the dark monday night the power just went out without any warning for some residents it wasn't just a momentary outage it was going to be done at 8 30 and then 9 30 and then 10 30 and then it kept going down but it actually ended up coming back on around i think one or two am thankfully edmonton was no longer under the extreme cold weather warning but it still created concerns for some residents one man took to twitter writing me and the kids go to sleep together to stay warm and i'm type 2 diabetic and not being able to cook is hard when i need to eat please fix this another parent worried about their child's health saying now i gotta put my eight-month-old into the car at midnight when i could have done this hours ago what bothered these parents the most was being told by apkor power would be back on only to have the blackout extended epcor defended its actions saying the outage was complex claiming it can be difficult to predict how long it will take to restore power and the restoration times are just estimates i definitely felt the house getting less and less warm rebecca was also concerned about wasting expensive groceries if the food in her fridge spoiled i was just wondering like oh like is it going to be safe to eat these items tomorrow like if it's cooked like will i get sick according to epcor food will stay cold in an unopened fridge for up to four hours during a power outage and freezer foods will stay good for one to two days some reddit users were proactive and say they put their food outside last night to keep cool although it's not recommended by ahs while it may seem very attractive given some of the some of the cold temperatures that we've had the sun's rays could actually just warm or thaw that chilled or frozen food even though the outer temperature appears really cold or there might be animals that could come along and really contaminate your food city news reached out to epcor for an interview but they declined in an email they said the outage was caused by a transformer that tripped but power was fully restored by 4 am in edmonton laura kraus city news