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Delta car crash responsible for brief power surge Sunday night

The two people inside escaped with minor injuries. Shane MacKichan

Did your lights flicker or go out briefly around 7:30 Sunday night?

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Well a car crash in Delta appears to be to blame.

The car, with two people inside, crashed into a pole at Nordel Way and Brooke Road.

The pole is used for high voltage transmission and following the crash a surge was reported by many people throughout the Lower Mainland and even Vancouver Island.

BC Hydro confirms the pole was destroyed in the crash.

BC Hydro spokesperson Mora Scott says the crash caused a 2.5 second outage and may have caused lights to flicker or surge protection equipment to kick in.

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“Obviously this is pretty rare, it’s not something we typically see,” says Scott.

“That two-and-a-half second outage was to allow our system to switch over to another circuit so that we could continue to provide power to our customers. We do have redundancy built into our system that continues to allow us to provide power in situations like this.”

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“It was one of our big transmission lines, so one of the big lines that comes into the Lower Mainland that feeds power to our customers and then there’s other smaller lines that come off that one main feed so that’s why the impact was so great,” adds Scott.

The two people in the car escaped with minor injuries.

Police say Brooke Road between Nordel and 85B Avenue will be closed until crews repair the pole.

Credit: Shane MacKichan.

There was a lot of discussion about the surge on social media Sunday night.

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