Sunday's windstorm hit hard in the North: BC Hydro confirms 45,000 customers affected
CHARLIE LAKE – Entire cities in the Peace Region were left in the dark early Sunday morning, including Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Tumbler Ridge and all the communities in between, during the windstorm which blew across the North on March 7 – 8.
While province-wide reports cited over 18,000 customers without power during the windstorm, BC Hydro confirmed that numbers exceeded the 41,000 customers noted on the Outage List.
“There were about 45,000 Peace region customers without power when the transmission system tripped offline at about midnight Saturday,” Bob Gammer, BC Hydro’s Manager of Northern Community Relations reported to the broken typewriter.
The cause recorded on the Outage List was “transmission circuit failure,” which Gammer explained occurred after the high winds northern British Columbia was experiencing at the time, “damaged some equipment in the WAC Bennett Dam switchyard.”
“While transmission circuits can trip offline, this type of event is extremely rare.”
Crews worked through the night to restore power, with service being restored gradually between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., Gammer said.
Even when equipment was repaired at the dam switchyard, the effects of the earlier winds were still being felt throughout the region.
“In some cases, once the transmission outage ended, customers were still in the dark because of tree contacts with power lines in their neighbourhoods,” he said.
Power in Fort St. John and Charlie Lake was restored at 6:45 a.m.
Thanks for reading! Original work by Tania Finch. If you’re inspired by this piece, feel free to share with credit and a link back — that’s how local stories spread fairly.