Thousands of people were without power in the Cowichan Valley Wednesday morning, as a windstorm walloped the area.
Many may have thought Cowichan had dodged the worst when they woke up Wednesday morning to a sunny day, with nothing more than a few wind gusts, after the storm had been predicted to hit Tuesday night.
Winds got progressively more severe, however, as the morning moved towards afternoon, with multiple power outages reported by 10:30 a.m. throughout the Cowichan Valley, from Shawnigan Lake to Chemainus and Saltair.
Fire departments were called out to numerous locations to secure areas where trees came down on lines, and poles snapped, as they waited for BC Hydro to make it to all of the locations. Koksilah Road was blocked off in the Fairbridge area, as there were reports of multiple power poles that were broken in the storm.
Some of the most widespread outages included one in Cobble Hill affecting more than 1,900 customers, one in Cowichan Station affecting more than 700 customers, and an outage that has taken out power to the majority of Chemainus and Saltair, affecting more than 1,900 customers.
The Municipality of North Cowichan was forced to postpone its regular Zoom council meeting on Wednesday afternoon until Friday because some of the councillors couldn’t participate as power was out at their homes.
More as is becomes available.
Winds were expected to taper off towards evening.
