Tuesday’s wind storm still has some residents in the dark.
As of Thursday morning, B.C. Hydro is reporting ongoing power outages at several locations in Lake Country and along Westside Road.
There are also outages in Spallumcheen, rural Lumby and Cherryville.
The cause in most cases is wires down or trees on wires.
“We’ve got 20 crews working in the field in the Vernon area right now. There are still pockets of customers out, but we expect all of those customers who lost power during Tuesday’s storm to have power restored at some point today (Thursday). We appreciate their patience and understanding,” said Dah Sharman, with B.C. Hydro.
“It’s been a heck of a storm, a major challenge. The sheer number of separate outages and the extent of damage done to our system by trees falling into our lines and our equipment are the two biggest challenges. We’ve been faced with power outages in 60 separate locations at the same time in the Okanagan alone. And they were in various parts of the Okanagan. For every one of those outages crews have to attend the area, patrol the line to find the problem, make it safe for the public and crews, remove trees and branches, assess the damage, source any new equipment to replace damaged or destroyed equipment (reclosers, transformers, communications equipment, spans of wire, poles etc.), and begin the repair job, which is often a construction project with the rebuilding of the line.”
Sharman said the repair jobs themselves in this storm have often been in difficult to access areas, especially for specialized equipment.
“In a number of cases multiple trees have come down in different locations on the same power line. So it’s been an enormous job.”
For updates on outages, go to https://www.bchydro.com/power-outages/app/outage-list.html#current-2072041405
