Approximately 12,000 homes in Parksville Qualicum Beach were without power on Sunday, Jan. 12, as a wind and snowstorm knocked multiple trees across power lines across the region.
Ted Olynyk with B.C. Hydro says heavy winds brought down multiple branches and trees across wires in the region, causing the outages and bringing power lines down.
“At the peak, in the Parksville Qualicum area, we had about 12,000 customers out. That was at 5 p.m,” said Olynyk.
Crews are enroute to an outage affecting 2,400 customers in #QualicumBeach. They hope to arrive on site by 5:50 p.m. They'll share updates on our mobile site: https://t.co/6aLs3RMwad pic.twitter.com/Z3Nv7YUIJo
— BC Hydro (@bchydro) January 13, 2020
“It really started to ramp up around 4 [p.m.], when we hit 11,000 customers out. Crews worked throughout the evening, and we were able to get it down to about 700 customers around midnight. Just before 8 a.m., the last 30 customers were brought back on.”
Winds have also caused big delays for those travelling on B.C. Ferries – multiple sailings were cancelled Sunday Jan. 12, causing a backlog of passengers trying to get to and from the mainland.
READ MORE: BC Ferries seeing serious delays after high winds
As of Monday Jan. 13, B.C. Ferries says no sailings have been cancelled, although the Queen of Coquitlam, which runs between Departure Bay and Horseshoe Bay, is running one hour behind due to a frozen berth.
#BCFHeadsUp There have been no cancelled sailings today as of yet. If this changes, updates will be posted to our #ServiceNotice page, here: https://t.co/iUZEJzIl3r ^ta
— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) January 13, 2020
Ferries weren’t the only boats affected by the inclement weather. Chris Rose at Beachcomber Strata says that the storm has wrecked some havoc on their marina as well with the escape of rogue ship that was moored at the nearby Beachcomber Marina in Nanoose Bay.
“We had a boat that broke loose during storm, and is now on the rocks at the end of Northwest Bay, down from the marina,” said Rose.
“It’s probably 300-400 yards from the marina.”
Rose says the Coast Guard is on the scene to assess next steps.
