Our power has been out 149 times in the 12 years we have lived in East Sooke (we do keep track). We’re used to it, and are prepared for outages.
We have always been able to call the B.C. Hydro PowerOn line to get an estimated time of the outage. Until last week. All we got was a recorded message advising us that Hydro was “experiencing higher than normal calls, and agents are unavailable.” We were advised by this recording to visit Hydro’s website, Twitter or Facebook page.
Really? The power was out, so we have no access to any of those things.
We are entitled to information — at least knowing an approximate time as to when the power will be restored helps us all make plans about preparing food, dealing with small children, checking on elderly neighbours, etc.
B.C. Hydro expects us to “be prepared” for outages. I expect Hydro to be prepared for higher-than-normal calls, and to give us the information we need.
Patricia Marsh
East Sooke
