Residents of Olalla have been left in the cold after a natural gas outage earlier Monday cut power to their heating.

According to provider Fortis BC, an independent contractor damaged one of the gas mains, resulting in the wide-spread outage.

The Review spoke to one resident who confirmed the outage started this morning, however they chose not to be quoted.

Read More: Power outage leaves 1,500 North Okanagan residents in the dark

Following the outage, Fortis BC dispatched their teams to find the source of the damage and repair it.

“Around 9 a.m., we noticed there was third-party damage to our infrastructure that impacted 190 customers,” said Jas Baweja, a spokesman for Fortis BC.

Repairs to the damaged main were completed around 4 p.m. with Fortis now in the process of going from home to home to reignite furnaces and other appliances.

“We’re expecting to finish the process around 8:30 tonight,” said Baweja. “If people aren’t home, we’ll leave a tag and come back later.”

By 4 p.m. Monday, temperatures had plummeted to a chilling -14C.

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