Over one thousand customers are without power in the South Cariboo.
“A lot of them are still are still listed as under investigation,” said Bob Gammer is the Community Relations Manager for Northern BC Hydro, “ but given the weather that has been experienced in the last 24-hours these are likely tree contacts with power lines brought on by the winds.”
Gammer explained how crews tackle getting the power restored.
“Our crews start with the largest outage first and they also start with outages closest to the sub-station and then they work their way out to the end of the power line and that way they can get more customers on quickly. When they are actually in the field, they are looking for trouble, typically trees resting on the power line or broken poles and cross-arms. If they don’t see any sign of that they’ll call back to the control center to see if they can re-energize safely, or if there’s lots of damage, then they roll up their sleeves and get at it. So once the crew has had a chance to assess the situation then we get a better sense of when power will be restored.”
Gammer added that if power is not on by 9 or 10 tonight to call 1-800-BC HYDRO and say your power is still out and the agent can probably give you some kind of an update and just go from there.