Power went out for about 237,000 B.C. Hydro customers Monday as strong winds battered Vancouver Island and the mainland — and the lights might not come back on for some until Tuesday.
A statement from B.C. Hydro said the winds caused “significant damage” across Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and the Lower Mainland.
It says more than 133,000 customers have had their power restored, but as of 5 p.m. Monday, about 100,000 were still without electricity.
Bulletins on the B.C. Hydro website say the utility is asking customers on South Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Sunshine Coast to “prepare for the possibility of being without power overnight.”
All available crews and contractor crews are responding, repairing damaged power lines, poles and other equipment, B.C. Hydro said in a statement.
It said the crews will prioritize outages involving downed lines that could pose a risk to safety, then focus on restoring power to critical and municipal services, followed by outages affecting large numbers of customers, then smaller outages.
B.C. Hydro said Surrey, Victoria and Sechelt were among the areas hardest hit by the outages caused by winds that triggered warnings from Environment Canada about gusts reaching speeds of up to 100 kilometres an hour in Metro Vancouver.
A multi-year drought has weakened vegetation, making trees and branches more likely to fall in a windstorm, it said.
Fallen trees and downed power lines led to detours on several B.C. Transit routes in Greater Victoria on Monday afternoon.
A five-kilometre stretch of Highway 14 was closed in both directions between Langford and Metchosin in the morning due to a tree across the road. The roadway reopened about noon.
Most of Environment Canada’s weather warnings were dropped late Monday afternoon, but strong winds and heavy rain remained in the forecast for all of Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley through to Hope.
Winter storm warnings and bulletins were also in effect for several stretches of highway in southern B.C., where the weather office said strong winds and heavy snow could create “near-zero visibilities and treacherous driving conditions.”
The warnings covered the Coquihalla Highway from Hope to Merritt and Highway 3 from the Paulson summit area to the Kootenay Pass.
The snow was expected to taper off overnight, with accumulations ranging from about 20 centimetres at the Coquihalla summit to about 40 centimetres along the Kootenay Pass by Tuesday, the warning bulletin said.
Lower-level special weather statements were in effect Monday for the Coquihalla Highway between Merritt and Kamloops, as well as Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton and the Okanagan Connector from Merritt to Kelowna, where the forecast called for snowfall ranging from five to 10 centimetres.
