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UPDATE: Power restored to 1600 homes in south Nanaimo

Aug 2, 2016 | 9:45 AM

NANAIMO — BC Hyrdo’s website map shows power has been restored to all of the homes affected by the outage earlier this morning. Power was restored around 1:15pm.

EARLIER:

A wire down near Chase Elementary has left about 1600 customers in South Nanaimo with no power.

It happened around 7:15am, and crews will be working until 12:30pm to fix the problem.

Karla Louwers with BC Hydro says the thunder and lightning storm caused a number of issues.

“There’s lots of small outages right now and lots of of trouble that actually don’t report as outages,” said Louwers. “The weather storm that we’re seeing is causing impact to our system and keeping crews on their toes.”

Louwers urges the public to call 1-866-POWER ON to report an outage and to use as much caution as possible around downed lines.

“It’s a great reminder for everybody that if you do see a wire down, always assume it’s energized.  Call 9-1-1 and stay at least ten metres away.  If there’s others in the area do your part to keep them away as well.”

The most up to date information on outages is available at bchydro.com.