Strong winds that blasted the High Arctic hamlet of Grise Fiord last week have left residents with no internet access or cable television.

"It's amazing how much we are now dependent on technology, and when those are gone, it feels like that we are not connected with the world at all," Marty Kuluguqtuq said Thursday.

The community, located on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island, was blasted by winds gusting up to 100 kilometres per hour over the weekend. The wind sent debris flying through the hamlet, knocked down satellite dishes, damaged shacks and flipped boats.

Residents are safe and dealing with the aftermath, Kuluguqtuq, the hamlet's acting senior administrative officer, told CBC News.

The hamlet's CBC Radio frequency is down and the Grise Fiord Co-op's cable television service could be out of service for at least a week, Kuluguqtuq said.

Internet service is also disrupted, as broadband equipment in the community, which belongs to Nunavut Broadband Development Corp.'s Qiniq service, has been damaged.

As a result, residents, the hamlet office, the local hunters and trappers organization and the local housing association are not receiving e-mails.

"A lot of agencies that rely on Qiniq service, those are going to be out for the next two to three weeks," Kuluguqtuq said.

Officials with Yellowknife-based SSI Micro, which manages the Qiniq network, said a broken bolt has put Qiniq's satellite dish in Grise Fiord out of alignment.

Internet access has been turned off until it's repaired.

"It is probably in the seven to 10 days [range], maybe as long as two weeks if there's delays in getting the parts that we need out of the States," SSI Micro president Jeff Philipp said.

"That's the best knowledge that we have at the moment."

Qiniq customers affected by the outage will be fully compensated for the period in which the service is down, Philipp said.

Rankin Inlet shovels out from blizzard

Another Nunavut hamlet, Rankin Inlet, is still cleaning up from a week-long blizzard in late January.

Crews have been working extra shifts for the past two weeks, clearing roads and uncovering buried garbage. On Tuesday night, snow clearers added a late shift to their day and will work more late shifts until the job is done, Rankin Inlet Mayor Lorne Kusugak said.

He said he hopes the Nunavut government will help the hamlet pay the extra costs.

"If not, then we'll have to find ways of paying for it," Kusugak said.

"But I think they know this was extraordinary expenses. We're very hopeful that they will come in and help us foot some of the cost."

A mining company operating in the area has pitched in. Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. loaned the hamlet some of its machinery to help with snow clearing.