While some may have been dreaming of a white Christmas, many more experienced a black Christmas, due to power outages caused by the Dec. 25 storm.
According to BC Hydro community relations manager Ted Olynyk, at its peak, approximately 7,000 customers in the Comox Valley experienced power outages.“That happened at 8 p.m. on Christmas Day and it really kicked in unfortunately, right at dinner time,” said Olynyk. “It went from just a couple hundred outages to over 5,000, at around 5 p.m.”
Nearly 97 per cent of all power had been restored by 2 p.m. on Boxing Day.
While the remote islands, such as Hornby, are typically the most challenging outages to address, BC Hydro makes plans in advance to address any issues in such communities.
At one point on Dec. 25, all of Hornby Island was shown as affected by power outages.
“It’s always a challenge getting to the Gulf Islands,” said Olynyk. “We do try and leave vehicles on some of the Gulf Islands (for immediate response). The vehicles we leave over there… help us deal with quick emergencies or do assessments, but we still need the ferries to bring over the heavy equipment to do the work.”
Approximately 4,300 customers in the Royston/Cumberland/west Courtenay area went dark around suppertime.
Crews have been assigned to an outage affecting 2,500 customers in the #Cumberland area. They’ll share available updates here: https://t.co/atz2lIvAar pic.twitter.com/y8Yx0mERf2
— BC Hydro (@bchydro) December 26, 2023
Crews are on their way to an outage affecting 1,800 customers outside of the #Courtenay area. They’ll be arriving on site shortly and sharing updates here: https://t.co/Thm9G7L5as pic.twitter.com/Dy8glhBE2W
— BC Hydro (@bchydro) December 26, 2023
The most common reason for the outages was downed power lines, caused by fallen trees.
Olynyk said that while this storm was a typical winter storm, the effects of it are part of a new reality, brought on by the summer droughts. The larger the tree, the more brittle it is at the higher areas, as vegetation hydrates itself from the roots upward.
“Vegetation that would normally stay up is coming down more easily now because of the stress that’s put on them during the summer… the recent summers that we have had, it’s just been drought after drought,” he said. “They (trees) just isolate themselves to the trunk and some of the branches are just dry and brittle and ready to fall off and come down to our lines.
“Our trees weren’t built for (that) kind of weather. So it’s put a lot of stress on them and it makes it a lot easier for them to fail.”
According to the BC Hydro website, nearly 28,000 customers on Vancouver Island were affected by the Christmas Day storm. The wind picked up again on Wednesday (Dec. 27) evening, and a couple of local outages were reported on the website Thursday (Dec. 28) morning, affecting approximately 50 customers.
To learn more about how to best prepare for power outages, visit bchydro.com