Wind storm knocks out power throughout Cowichan
A turbulent wind storm resulted in more 30,000 island customers losing power last night as numerous trees fell on BC Hydro lines.
Cowichan was hit hard by the outage that hit its peak between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesday night, according to BC Hydro.
“The Duncan and North Cowichan area was hit hard and had up to 3,600 customers without power,” said BC Hydro spokesperson Karla Louwers.
According to Louwers, Shawnigan Lake saw 2,000 customers lose power as well as 800 in the Ladysmith and Chemainus area.
“There was a wind storm that had had quite a bit of impact on BC Hydro’s system and lots of trees and branches were taken down and ended up falling on our lines,” she said. “The storm hit a little late in the day so we had crews out working till midnight.”
Those crews eventually capped out on the maximum hours they are allowed to work and were forced to stop work shortly after midnight.
Louwers confirmed that Duncan, which had had four crews working across the city, still had 500 customers without power at that time although crews began to work again at 5:30 a.m. this morning.
“We hope to have everyone’s power back on by 6 p.m. tonight.”
A total of 28 crews have been sent out to work up and down Vancouver Island since the outage begun, with Victoria needing “about half of those crews,” according to Louwers.
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