BC Hydro has cleared up many of Tuesday night’s power outages on Vancouver Island, but small areas in Parksville Qualicum Beach remained without electricity Wednesday morning.
According to the power company only about 1,200 homes were still without electricity as of 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, after B.C. Hydro restored power to an estimated 184,000 homes across Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland.
The largest pockets remaining are in Courtenay, Campbell River and on Saturna Island.
BC Hydro is constantly updated their website, and have now added a large orange box on their outages page. At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the page showed an isolated outage off the intersection of Despard Avenue and Martindale Road, and another residential outage near the coast, between Soriel Road and Chinook Avenue, both in Parksville.
In Qualicum Beach, Pheasant Glen Golf Resort was without power Wednesday morning. Also, one block of Kopernick Road in Errington, just off Leffler Road, and a corner at the intersection of Longmoor Road and Tintern Road in rural Qualicum Beach were down. B.C. Hydro indicated crews were assigned to each of the outages.
More than 15,000 people were without power after strong winds fell trees and caused power outages up and down Vancouver Island Tuesday evening.
Pym Road in Parksville was closed briefly Tuesday when the Parksville Volunteer Fire Department responded to a downed tree that took down power lines at Parksville Baptist Church, witness Don Little said.
The largest outage occurred on South Vancouver Island where nearly 7,000 residents are without power, including 4,000 due to high winds in the Oak Bay/Saanich area of Greater Victoria. Another 4,400 have had their power knocked out in the Gulf Islands.
The northern part of the Island witnessed similar events with outages reported in Campbell River, Courtenay, Port Hardy, Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Nanaimo.
Crews have been dispatched to these areas, but exact restoration times are unavailable due to the sheer number of outages. BC Hydro says it needs to assess the full damage and will continue to provide updates.
Environment Canada issued a wind warning earlier Tuesday, stating these strong winds could cause damage. They anticipated gusts of up to 90 km/h near the Juan de Fuca strait.
— With files from Black Press