BC Hydro continues to work towards restoring power after windstorm

Almost 350 BC Hydro customers in the Cariboo were still without power a day after a windstorm blew through the region.

“This was the first one of the season,” said Dave Mosure, BC Hydro community relations coordinator on Wednesday morning.

“Every time that happens, as usual, it identifies the weak trees from the year previous and tends to make problems with them-tossing them in the lines or branches off those trees, or even temporary contact with the lines.  Those can all add up to outages with various levels of repair being required.”

With the windstorm resulting in gusts of up to 85km/h in the Cariboo according to Environment Canada, Mosure said BC Hydro crews and contractors worked late throughout the day Tuesday.

“They were hard at it all last night until they timed out about 11 pm until midnight depending on when they started,” Mosure said. “They are required by WorkSafeBC to time out after 16 hours of work and take an 8-hour rest break.”

Meteorologist Doug Lundquist said Environment Canada is anticipating a possibly even more vigorous windstorm that will be coming through Friday.

“Again this was the first storm of the season with pretty big significance attached to it,” Mosure said. “We saw it come in from Haida Gwaii worked its way east along the Highway 16 corridor down through Prince George, Quesnel, Wells-Barkerville, Williams Lake, and 100 Mile and then worked its way over into the Kootenays as it started to lose power and move out of the area, but it truly was a significant event and a start to the storm season.”