Grand Forks residents that have been without power since Friday evening’s wind storm could have power restored by this evening or tomorrow, if it hasn’t been restored already.
“We have been able to restore service to some areas of Grand Forks but currently, in Grand Forks, we have approximately 300 customers without power and we expect to restore service to at least half of those customers by this evening (July 22),” explained Joyce Wagenaar, director of communications for Fortis BC, adding that while the 300 customers include people throughout the Grand Forks area, the majority are in the North Fork Road area.
“There’s been a fair bit of storm damage, particularly with poles coming down and wires coming down and just needing to make those repairs and get folks back up and running,” she said.
“We do think that there will be some folks that won’t get their service restored until tomorrow morning but please keep in mind we have crews working through the night and we want to bring everyone on as quickly as possible.”
Wagenaar said that around 1,600 customers at Christina Lake were also affected by the storm and had power restored by noon time on Saturday (July 21).
The City of Grand Forks – which provides power to most residents within city limits – seemed to be largely unaffected by the storm, although there had to be power cut to certain areas on Friday.
“We did have to disconnect power for a period of time in some areas because there were trees over power lines and we couldn’t touch the trees without cutting the power first,” said City CAO Lynne Burch.
