B.C. Hydro crews are scrambling to deal with power outages after Thursday’s wind storm hit BC’s south coast, downing trees and branches over power lines.
In the Greater Victoria area, the West Shore and the Saanich Peninsula were the hardest hit areas with thousands of customers without power. Smaller outages were scattered across the Greater Victoria area. As of 10:30pm, more that 65-thousand customers in total were in the dark on the South Island alone.
Due to the large number of outages and ongoing winds, B.C. Hydro said Thursday that they were struggling with specific estimates for restoration times. However, they said all available crews and resources would work through the night. In some cases, Hydro said they’d need to wait for the winds to ease before it was safe enough for crews to work.
Ted Olynyk, B.C. Hydro's Community Relations Manager, said it's hard to say when power will be returned to many areas. "Of course we're going to have to do an assessment and understand what we're looking at... certainly there will be customers who won't see their power tonight. And I'm sure on some of the more remote areas it may be a multi day event that we see. This is reminiscent of the 2006 storm."
Olynyk says another system bringing westerly winds is expected and there's concern that any trees weakened by this current system could be impacted by the next one.
The winds may have claimed a life in Duncan. The B.C. Coroner's Service said it was investigating a death related to a tree that fell in the windstorm.
B.C. Ferries resumed sailings at approximately 6pm Thursday evening on the Swartz Bay-to-Tsawwassen route, after all previous sailing had been cancelled. There was also a 7pm and 9pm sailing.
As for the winds themselves, Environment Canada predicted the storm would ease overnight.