After a 27 hour delay, power was restored in the New Westminster neighbourhood of Queensborough Thursday morning.
With no power and no places to go, residents of the neighbourhood banded together to help make things easier for each other. The local fire hall served hotdogs to people, and a local Sikh temple opened its doors to help provide food.
The Starlight Casino, which has a back up generator, opened its buffet free from 4 to 7 p.m. to residents of the Queensborough area.
Power was cut off early Wednesday morning, after an electrical fire to the cables that run underneath the Queensborough bridge. Traffic was cut off going both ways while crews worked to ensure there was no structural damage to the bridge, and to restore power to the neighbourhood.
READ MORE: Electricity restored to Queensborough, 27 hours after electrical fire and bridge closure
New Westminster operates its own electric utilities, separate from BC Hydro. The city is planning to build a Queensborough substation by 2021 to eliminate the needed power lines under the bridge to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
There’s no word on the cause of the fire that caused the outage, or the cost of damages.