BC Hydro says a faulty underground feeder cable was to blame for a blackout affecting more than 2,650 customers in Campbell River and across Quadra Island on Thursday night.
Campbell River resident Debbie Dickie was at the Royal Canadian Legion on Quadra Island, where she teaches line dancing, when the blackout hit at around 7:50 p.m.
“It was total blackness,” she said, describing the scene in the Heriot Bay area. “It was so creepy.”
She noted that an emergency light came on at the Quadra Legion. On the way to the Quasthiaski Cove ferry terminal, “all you saw was headlights,” she said.
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The lights were out in boats docked in the Quasthiaski Cove, but ferry operations continued. There were emergency lights in the waiting room at the ferry terminal, she said.
In the downtown Campbell River area, street lamps and traffic lights were out, leaving the city in almost total darkness.
The blackout created an eerie atmosphere.
After returning to the city on the 9:15 p.m. sailing, Dickie walked from the ferry terminal to the parking lot at Tyee Plaza with a friend.
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“Now that was creepy, because you walk through this dark walkway,” she said. “We were just sort of holding onto each other. I was just really thankful that I didn’t go by myself last night.”
The lack of lighting in the Tyee Plaza parking lot made it hard to locate their cars, she added.
BC Hydro said on Friday that a faulty underground feeder cable from the Campbell River substation led to the outage.
“The feeder that was impacted served a portion of Campbell River and all of Quadra Island,” said Karla Louwers, a BC Hydro spokesperson, in an email to the Mirror.
Crews were able to switch around the fault to restore power, she said, adding that a specialized crew will repair the circuit in the near future.
At least one report on social media indicated that the blackout was caused by a transformer failure at 260 South Island Highway, but that wasn’t the case, said Louwers.
She confirmed that a transformer failure took place at that location, but it was unrelated to the larger outage, she said.
“This transformer is on a different feeder,” Louwers said.
The outage affected 2,269 BC Hydro customers.
Power appeared to be restored in most of the downtown area by about 11:30 p.m. BC Hydro was reporting no outages in Campbell River by 11:37 p.m.
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