Power flickered out for thousands of BC Hydro customers in the Cowichan Valley during a windstorm Friday night and the weather was to blame for outages over the course of the weekend.
During the Friday night storm, more than 4,500 residents and businesses were without electricity for periods in Crofton, Chemainus, Saltair, Cobble Hill and the Cowichan Lake area.
As of 10 p.m. Duncan residents had gotten away with only intermittent flickering of their electricity.
Most of the outages were relatively brief, with power back up and running within a couple of hours. All were listed as being caused by trees down across wires.
High winds that had been forecast for the evening also hit neighbouring communities, with Nanaimo bearing the brunt of the outages. The foul weather continued throughout the weekend.
Dec. 15 and Dec. 16 also saw roughly 65 customers without power in spots from Lake Cowichan to North Cowichan, the bulk of which were also attributed to trees on wires.
“It was a good little windstorm that hit us on the east coast of the island,” said BC Hydro spokesman Ted Olynyk, who said he believed more wind and rain were on the way.
