Public affairs spokesperson Karen Zeppa reports that homeowners in the area bounded by Warden Avenue to the west, Birchmount Road to the east, Ellesmere Road to the south and Steeles Avenue to the north have experienced a number of blackouts since November.

"It's an underground system with buried cables," Zeppa said, noting it has been difficult to determine the cause of the recent power outages because the disruptions were intermittent.

St. Henry Catholic School and three nearby condominiums on Bamburgh Circle were without power for more than nine hours Friday, one of several days last week for which there was a cold weather alert.

However, school principal Peter Lannan said students weren't sent home.

"The temperature of the school stayed quite comfortable," he said, adding there were new windows installed in the building this year which may have helped.

The students in portables were brought inside the main building for the afternoon, he said, noting the outage "didn't pose any major problems."

Lannan added, "because our rooms are nice and bright, it almost looked like there were lights on."

He said there was also a brief power cut last Thursday and at least two over the holiday break.

Ward 39 Councillor Mike Del Grande (Scarborough-Agincourt) said his office has received numerous calls from concerned residents.

"We've seen an ongoing problem," he said. "It's just not acceptable to have this type of service."

The recently elected councillor was attempting to set up a meeting with hydro officials this week.

"The problem, from my perspective, seems to be chronic," he said.

Zeppa reported that Toronto Hydro's records indicate there have been at least four outages in the area since November.

"In our view that's too many because it's important we have a high reliability for customers," she said, noting any power outage is "very inconvenient for the customer."

Zeppa said when workers isolated the problem last Friday, the cable was re-routed to different switchgear.

However, when that happened, another problem occurred.

Zeppa said it was unfortunate that people experienced an outage for several hours during such a cold snap.

"Right now we've got a maintenance plan in place," she said. "We've got a reliable feed established for the area."

She continued saying, "We're doing an in-depth investigation to determine if we need a long-term capital solution."

The system is about 25-years-old in the area, she noted.

Zeppa said Toronto Hydro is planning to distribute information outlining what is being done to address the situation to community members sometime next week.