WATCH: Metro Vancouver Chair Greg Moore speaks with Geoff Hastings on BC1 about the cleanup efforts
It was called “a wake up call” for the region, but 24 hours after the worst storm to hit British Columbia in a decade, officials in the Metro Vancouver region said they were generally pleased with the emergency response.
“Things were handled fairly well,” said Greg Moore, Chair of Metro Vancouver and Mayor of Port Coquitlam.
The number of customers in the region without power has decreased from a peak of 440,000 to less than 180,000 on Sunday afternoon.
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BC Hydro says over 400 people, some from as far away as Smithers, are helping with restoration efforts.
“We’ve got vegetation people out cutting trees, taking them off the power lines, we have damage assessors and people working in our restoration centres,” said Greg Reimer, BC Hydro’s Executive Vice-President of Transmission, Distribution and Customer Service.
Restoring power everywhere will take though – especially in those areas where trees have downed power line poles.
“We still have some trees against local roads…if there is a hydro line involved, obviously we have to we wait for BC Hydro to make sure they secure that area before we remove the trees. That’s our biggest challenge now,” said Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart. “Our city is reeling from some pretty serious damage.”
WATCH: Stewart discusses the power outages, and the reasons patience is required as BC Hydro repairs the lines
Stewart said he’s heard from many residents frustrated from the delays. With one 10-minute exception late last night, BC Hydro’s website has been down since the storm hit, and estimates of restoring power everywhere by noon Sunday has been pushed back at least 12 hours.
Still, he urges patience.
“The results would be catastrophic if we flicked the switch before every single line had been identified.”
Metro Vancouver Regional District’s emergency program co-ordinator Rod Tulett said the district’s emergency procedures performed extremely well so far.
He described Saturday’s gales as the backup system’s biggest test since the district was caught off-guard by a 2006 windstorm, that battered the Lower Mainland and uprooted numerous trees in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
“After the big windstorm a lot of our facilities received significant upgrades in their backup-power capability,” said Tulett. “We learned from that.”
The City of Vancouver reported receiving more than 1,000 weather-related calls regarding debris, damage and flooding.
Was your car damaged in the B.C. windstorm? Here’s what you need to know.
“Over the next 24 hours we’ll get the majority of the big trees out of the streets,” said Sadhu Johnston, Deputy City Manager for the City of Vancouver. “But, it will take weeks for us to fully clean up the debris.”
Johnston, Moore, Stewart, and every other regional official interviewed by Global News on Sunday couldn’t put an estimate on damages, saying a full assessment would be made in the days ahead.
But one thing is clear: the storm brought home the reality of emergency preparedness in a very real way to hundreds of thousands of British Columbians.
“It’s a reminder to all of us. This was a big storm, but it’s nothing compared to a big massive earthquake,” said Moore.
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