BC Hydro says major transmission lines are coated with ash and smoke from the wildfires burning near Clinton, B.C., which is causing flickering lights and power interruptions across the province.
“Part of the backbone of the grid is near where there’s a lot of fire activity in the Southern Interior,” Bob Gammer, BC Hydro community relations coordinator, told CKPG News.
“And smoke and ash is getting on some of our largest power lines down in the Southern Interior. That’s what’s leading to this flickering of the lights.”
Gammer said that due to the wildfire activity near the power lines, it’s not safe for crews to get in there and do anything with soot and ash buildup.
Get breaking National news
“Often we build redundancy into the hydro system for that very reason, so we can do workarounds,” he added.
“But in this case, this is so central to the whole operation of the grid, there really isn’t a suitable workaround in this case for our large 500,000-volt transmission lines.”
- All evacuation orders downgraded for Quilpituk Creek wildfire, residents return home
- Peachland residents to return home Friday, 1 week after Bald Range fire started
- Saskatoon students will return to class on time despite high school blaze, board
- Bald Range wildfire: New orders issued as some residents allowed home
Three wildfires are burning in the region near Clinton and numerous evacuation orders and alerts have been issued.
On Friday, the entire Village of Clinton was placed under an evacuation order after the Pear Lake fire made a rapid push toward the community.
The three wildfires, known as the Big Bar complex, have destroyed at least 20 structures in the Big Bar Lake area, wildfire officials confirmed on Thursday.
In the south okanagan we had a full power outage for a couple of hours as well as a major thunder and lightening storm and we thought no problem we will use our cell phone to get information. Well that was a bust as there was virtually no response from the internet access, even using cellular network was useless. So that tells me that cell phones will be useless in a real emergency, so back to the old and trusted portable radios for local information. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.
We had a power outage a few evenings ago with a big electrical, thunderstorm with heavy rain and couldn’t find any information on our phones. Relying on phones if a serious emergency happened is not a good option.