Wind storm cuts power to over 100,000 households in Metro Vancouver

Strong winds and heavy rain battered Metro Vancouver overnight, leaving thousands of homes without power Wednesday morning.

About 120,000 households, mostly across the Lower Mainland, were without electricity as of 6 a.m. Wednesday, said B.C. Hydro.

Hardest hit areas are Surrey, where 18,400 homes were in the dark, Port Coquitlam (12,500 homes), Burnaby (11,700 homes), Vancouver (11,200 homes) and Maple Ridge (11,200 homes).

In all, about 103,000 homes on the Lower Mainland and the Sunshine Coast were affected, including areas of Abbotsford, Bowen Island, Chilliwack, Port Moody, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Delta, Hope, Langley, Mission, North Vancouver, Richmond and West Vancouver.

Another 15,000 homes had no power on Vancouver Island.

The widespread outage marks the third major weather-related outage this week, said B.C. Hydro.

The storm knocked down trees and blew debris onto electrical infrastructure, damaged power lines, poles and other equipment.

“Crews are working around-the-clock in challenging conditions to restore service as quickly and safely as possible,” it said in a statement.

In Langley, schools will have a 10 a.m. start on Wednesday due to the large number of schools without power, said the district.

Environment Canada has lifted warnings and statements over rain and wind in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.

More to come … 

chchan@postmedia.com

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