Power returned to thousands of customers in Oak Bay after a six-hour outage caused by a manhole fire on Oak Bay Avenue this morning.
At about 5:30 a.m. the lights went out in Oak Bay in an area stretching into Victoria and Saanich. About 3,000 customers were affected.
That power was restored to all customers before noon.
B.C. Hydro spokesman Ted Olynyk confirmed the cause of the power interruption. He added that it is not uncommon to have an extreme change in weather — such as the high temperatures over 20 C in Greater Victoria this week — cause problems with utility equipment.
In an unrelated incident, a vehicle crash in the Comox-Courtenay area caused more than 600 people to be without power over the noon hour.
