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BC Hydro, Environment Canada breakdown power outage in Northern BC

Power has been restored to all Northern BC homes following Wednesday night’s massive power outage.

BC Hydro Spokesperson, Bob Gammer spoke with Vista Radio.

“We had everything back on, every customer in the north by 11:30 pm last night, it was quite the massive outage with over 120,000 customers and from start, to finish it lasted about two and a half hours.”

Gammer adds the crown corporation is still looking into the lightning strike that caused the lights to go out for much of the region.

“We don’t know where the lightning hit but it did cause an outage, knocking out key equipment and that is why we saw this widespread blackout, the important thing was to slowly restore power.”

Environment Canada Meteorologist, Gregg Walters confirmed there were lightning strikes in the area.

“We had some lightning developing in the late afternoon and early evening with a pretty good swath of lightning for the area basically to the west of Prince George and also some lightning down in the Cariboo near Quesnel.”

“There is still enough heat from the late summer to generate some thunderstorm activity and those will generally occur into the late afternoon and early evening but it doesn’t look like anything was severe in terms of thunderstorms.”

Affected communities included Prince George, Vanderhoof, Smithers, Houston and Burns Lake.

Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].

Brendan Pawliw
Brendan Pawliw
Since moving to Prince George in 2015, Brendan has covered local sports including the WHL’s Prince George Cougars, Prince George Spruce Kings, UNBC Timberwolves, Cariboo Cougars AAA, and Northern Capitals U18 female hockey teams. Career highlights include play-by-play during the Spruce Kings' BCHL championship runs in 2018 and 2019, including the Doyle Cup win. He also covered the 2019 National Junior A Championship, the 2017 Telus Cup, the 2022 World Women’s Curling Championship, and the 2022 BC Summer Games. Brendan is the news voice on 94.3 The Goat and Country 97 FM, reporting on crime, real estate, labour, and environmental issues. Outside of work, he officiates box lacrosse and fastball, sits on the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame board, and co-hosts the Hockey North podcast.

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