Power has been restored in Cranbrook after outages due to downed trees hitting wires affected roughly 5,600 customers last night, according to BC Hydro.
The outages occurred over four separate instances, starting around approximately 10:30 p.m.
In one case, power was restored two hours later, but all situations, the electricity was back online by the early morning hours.
“Since the storm arrived in our region yesterday, there were a series of outages in the East Kootenay,” said Sally MacDonald, a public affairs officer with BC Hydro. “There have been 81 trouble calls in Cranbrook, Fernie, Radium, Invemere and surrounding communities between 9 a.m. yesterday and now.
“In total, over 8,600 customers have been affected by outages during this time frame. All available BC Hydro crews, along with contractors, worked through the night to restore services safely and as quickly as possible.”
As of Wednesday morning, there were roughly 200 customers in Cranbrook, Moyie and the Columbia Valley without power, however, crews were on site to ensure power restoration.
Check out video capturing the moment the power went out Tuesday night.
MacDonald says downed trees striking power lines can cause flashes like the one in the video.
“When trees fall on power lines, arcing can cause blue flashes similar to what was seen in the video,” MacDonald said. “We have no reports of malfunctioning transformers in Cranbrook last night.”
