Power remains off for pockets of Sunshine Coast residents Monday following a Nov. 4 windstorm.
The BC Hydro Outage Map lists more than 20 outages around the lower Sunshine Coast as of 1:30 p.m. Nov. 7, including more than 350 customers on Gambier Island and more than 270 customers on Keats Island. While the islands’ power has been down since early Saturday morning, some outages date only to Monday morning. For most, trees down over wires or wires down are listed as the cause.
Friday evening, Environment Canada’s observations in Sechelt show the winds were strongest around 10 p.m., when a northwest wind of 34 km/h reached gusts of 47 km/h. The wind had picked up at 9 p.m. and held strong through 3 a.m. Saturday morning.
On Saturday, Nov. 5, Coast residents woke up to power outages, blocked roads and property damage.
As of 10:30 a.m., Nov. 5, BC Hydro listed 272 outages in the Lower Mainland/Sunshine Coast region, affecting 72,935 customers. Crews continued clean up work through the weekend, with power restored to 98 per cent of the 330,000 customers affected by the windstorm in B.C. by early Sunday morning, according to the company.
If you come across a downed power line, BC Hydro says to call 911 and stay at least 10 metres away. “A downed power line is an emergency.”
Busy night for fire departments
As the winds roared, local fire departments were responding to a slew of emergencies.
Between about 8 p.m. and midnight Nov. 4, Sechelt Fire Department responded to seven separate emergency call-outs to trees or powerlines down, Fire Chief Trevor Pike told Coast Reporter in an email. "Fire Resources were spread throughout the community and some calls were during extremely dangerous conditions due to the high velocity winds and driving rain."
"Fire crews worked with BC Hydro crews to mitigate hazards as quickly as possible. Due to the high number of events across the entire coast, some incident scenes could only be fire line taped and coned off to allow crews to move onto more serious risk-based events," said Pike. "Eventually, winds subsided and the emergency scenes were all deemed to be safe."
In Gibsons, the Gibsons & District Volunteer Fire Department responded to 19 calls for service in a 24-hour period, related to the windstorm, Fire Chief Rob Michael told Coast Reporter in an email. "First responders had to triage incident sites and ended up moving from call to call,” said Michael. “Firefighters were often called back to previous scenes as members of the public tore down flagging and moved cones out of their way.”
The danger of downed power lines
Both chiefs stressed the danger of downed powerlines. “Hydro crews are out making repairs and power can be turned on suddenly and unexpectedly,” said Michael. “It is understandably inconvenient; however, I urge everyone to stay indoors (if safe) and far away from downed powerlines until the scene has been addressed by hydro crews.”
“The [Sechelt Fire Department] would like to remind everyone to stay safe during wind storms and keep back at least 10 meters from any downed hydro lines or trees on lines as they can still be live,” said Pike. “Do NOT cross fire line taped areas as this is in place to protect you. Do not attempt to move lines or drive through trees that have fallen across roads and have lines in or around them.”
Michael said that firefighters and RCMP were called to a scene where someone was trying to clear their driveway using a chainsaw on a tree wrapped in powerlines.
Other emergencies Friday
Michael also noted firefighters were called to an incident where “a member of the public was using a propane stove to keep warm indoors.”
In Hopkins Landing, water supply was interrupted because of the storm, which would have had an impact had a fire broken out, said Michael.
“It is not our intention to call out these instances, however we [feel] it is important that the public be educated on these hidden dangers,” said Michael.
Pike asked people to “Stay inside unless it’s absolutely necessary to be out,” in such conditions.
– with files from Sophie Woodrooffe and Bronwyn Beairsto
