As a freezing rain warning gripped the Fraser Valley, thousands of homes were plunged into darkness Thursday night.
The first outages started popping up shortly before 8 p.m. More are now occurring Friday afternoon and are expected to continue into the evening.
At one point on Friday morning, about 11,000 BC Hydro customers in Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack didn’t have any power. Those numbers have continued to grow throughout the day.
Customers in Kent, Langley and Surrey are also impacted.
In a statement on its website, BC Hydro said it dispatched all available resources to work on the outages, but difficult conditions and extensive damage made it a challenge for crews to do their work.
In addition to the freezing rain warning, Environment Canada has issued a winter storm warning for the area.
The freezing rain is expected to stick around until the evening hours on Friday.
Environment Canada is urging people to avoid travelling if they can until conditions improve.
On its website, it says if you are going to be out on the roads to “prepare for quickly changing and deteriorating travel conditions.”
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