Arrow Lakes residents briefly found themselves without power on March 11 after a tree fell on the transmission line between Summit Lake and Box Lake.
Areas affected by the power outage included Nakusp, New Denver, Burton, and Fauquier, along with smaller communities in the area.
Sometimes when the power goes out in the area the system will trip off for safety.
“Sometimes it might be an incidental contact, a branch might get blown into the line and it will trip off, and if the tree goes back to where it was the system can re-energize by itself automatically,” said Jen Walker-Larsen, communications advisor with BC Hydro. “It always tries to do that, but because it didn’t do that, that means we’ve got a problem.”
Because power didn’t come back on immediately a local crew was sent out to figure out what happened.
The crew patrolled the line and found the tree that needed to be removed. Luckily the tree in question came down beside the highway, which meant there was good access for crews to reach it and clear it away.
Power was restored to Nakusp about an hour and a half after it first went out, and was fully restored to the area by 10:45 that night.
This power outage will not affect BC Hydro’s plans for maintenance along the highway.
“This project will improve reliability on that line because we will be doing some vegetation clearing, get it a little farther away from the lines, we’re going to be upgrading access roads, replacing a lot of poles and cross arms and a lot of the equipment that’s on the line,” said Walker-Larsen. “This will improve the reliability of that line.”
This project is estimated to take about two years to complete.
