BC Hydro crews had to work off the turkey dinners they ate over the long weekend, as a gusty windstorm ripped through the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island Tuesday (Oct. 13).
Wind speeds of 60 to 90 km/hr were clocked through Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, resulting in broken branches and a fair amount of havoc.
As of press time, the sole outage yet to be fixed in Maple Ridge was affecting less than five customers at Lougheed Hwy and 266th Street. A tree down on the wires was the culprit.
On Tuesday afternoon a large outage – also caused by a downed tree – impacting over 1800 residences and businesses extended from east of 240th Street, to South of Dewdney Trunk road and past Websters Corners in Maple Ridge.
READ MORE: High winds turning out lights in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows
There was another sizable outage in Silver Valley that had 1,127 Hydro customers in the dark, that accompanied three smaller outages nearby.
In Pitt Meadows, the largest power outage impacted 188 customers in the downtown core between Baynes and Harris Roads.
#BCStorm update: Our crews made good progress overnight & have restored power to more than 96% of all customers affected by yesterday's windstorm. Crews are working throughout the day to restore power to remaining customers by early evening. Updates: https://t.co/VnLBJ0aE8e pic.twitter.com/fTYbAVRoFw
— BC Hydro (@bchydro) October 14, 2020
BC Hydro said tens of thousands of customers were affected by the windstorm, noting the hardest hit areas were Qualicum and Courtenay on the island, and Abbotsford and Chilliwack on the mainland.
About 176,000 customers in total were impacted since midnight on Tuesday, and crews worked hard to restore power to about 76,000 customers as the storm has worked its way from Vancouver Island across the South Coast.
As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, there were still about 99,000 customers without power, however by Wednesday morning, the workers had been able to return power to 96 per cent of those affected.
ronan.p.odoherty@blackpress.ca
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