Power Outage Cause

Mar 6, 2017 | 9:04 AM

Some Greater Vernon area residents had a harder time getting ready for work or school this morning after a major power outage occurred around 7:45 a.m.

Jen Walker-Larsen from BC Hydro explains what caused it.

“A bird contacted some electrical equipment in the sub-station, and it tripped off six circuits, so six of the power lines that run from the sub-station to feed our customers were tripped off.”

Luckily, BC Hydro had a crew at that sub-station at the time.

“We actually had a crew at the sub-station doing some other work so they were able to quickly tell us that everything was good to go there and we got power back on 17 minutes later which was very fast.”

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Walker-Larsen says this was a very large and significant outage.

“Because there was six circuits that were affected it did affect a large geographic area. It was 15,000 customers in the Vernon, Coldstream and Spallumcheen areas.”

The electricity was all restored is and back on to everyone by 8:15 a.m.