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Islanders warned to get ready for ‘parade of storms’

Oct 17, 2017 | 3:14 PM

NANAIMO — As storm season hits the South Coast people are being warned to brace for disruptions.

Thousands of people were left without power on the mid-island Tuesday due to storm related outages, while northbound traffic on Hwy. 19 was gridlocked after a downed tree took out power lines, closing that section of the highway for several hours.

Environment Canada meteorologist Armel Castellan told NanaimoNewsNOW this is the beginning of a series of storms packed with heavy wind and rain.

“The parade of storms is certainly on now, it won’t be a surprise to me if we have routine weekly or bi-weekly storms.”

He cautioned South Coast storms can cause damage to homes from powerful winds and flooding and also make driving much more challenging.

“There’s a lot of things that work in concert and that’s why the warnings are sent out with as much anticipation as possible knowing those levels will be reached and therefore the impact will be present as well.”

BC Hydro crews were hopping Tuesday dealing with about 3,600 customers left without power. Most of the outages had been restored by the afternoon.

Hydro spokesman Ted Olynyk said they aim to restore power to as many customers as quickly as possible, noting hospitals and key community services take priority.

“Much like road plowing, you’re not going to start with a cul-de-sac first. You’re going to start with the highways first then the bus routes,” Olynyk said. “There’s no point restoring the line in a small little cul-de-sac when the line feeding that is down.”

Olynyk said their crews have the ability to restore power the same day the lights go out. However, he noted outages can lengthen beyond 24 hours when upwards of 40,000 mid-island customers are affected.

“A storm situation like that is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of crews to go out and restore the power, so we’re not going to get everybody on because we have such a large volume of outages.”

He said outages in urban settings are typically resolved sooner since there is usually less vegetation to contend with compared to harder to access rural settings.

 

ian@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @reporterholmes