Birds are blamed for two hydro outages in Chilliwack Thursday – one in the morning and another in the evening – that left more than 2,875 people without electricity for nearly two hours.
“It happens,” a BC Hydro spokesman said Friday. “It’s not something we see all the time, but it happens.”
A bird contacting a power line or a transformer in the Coote Street area at 5:46 a.m. knocked out power for about two hours for about five customers. Power was restored at 7:04 a.m.
But the second outage, again caused by a bird tripping a fuse, knocked out power to about 2,900 customers in two areas near downtown Chilliwack from 7:30 p.m. to about 9:15 p.m.
Most of the affected customers were in the area west of Cook Street to Fernway Avenue and from Henley Avenue south to Reece Avenue.
