The Tri-Cities went to sleep dreaming that power would be restored when they woke up.
That was the case for most, albeit maybe an extra layer under the covers, as BC Hydro has worked to bring back electricity to nearly 18,000 properties that were impacted by last night's (Nov. 4) wind storm.
It swept power away from hundreds of thousands of B.C. homes and businesses as gusts of up to 80 km/h hit Metro Vancouver, the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
Each Tri-Cities community experienced some sort of outage Friday night.
BC Hydro said trees knocked down on wires, via the wind storm, was the primary cause of most of the power loss — at times to customers by the thousands.
The provincial company explained most of the trees were already weakened by this past summer's drought, making it easy to fall down and flail about.
"As a result, crews continue to be busy repairing damaged power lines, power poles and other equipment," BC Hydro added in a release this morning (Nov. 5).
"Clean up work is expected to continue throughout the day. Because of the extensive damage, repair work may take some time and could continue into tomorrow, especially for customers in more remote areas. However, crews are working as quickly as possible to get the largest number of customers restored as soon as they can."
Less than 10 Port Coquitlam properties linked to BC Hydro's service are still without power, as of this publication.
BC Hydro is reminding the public to report any power lines that may still be down, stand back 10 metres and call 911 as it's classified as an emergency.
