Thousands of Vernon residents were getting ready for work in the dark Thursday morning.
A widespread power outage impacting more than 8,200 B.C. Hydro customers began just before 6:30 a.m.
By 10:30 a.m. most customers had their power restored, leaving only 749 without electricity.
B.C. Hydro said a problem with a piece of their equipment burned the top of a power pole in the area of the Department of National Defence property, located on the south side of Vernon.
The power pole fire did not spread to anything else but did knock out two main power lines.
The fire-damaged power pole, according to B.C. Hydro, will need to be replaced — a process that’s expected to take four to six more hours as of just before 9 a.m., the utility said.
In the meantime, another B.C. Hydro crew is working to reconfigure the system to switch people to a different power source. However, this fix is only expected to restore power to some of the impacted customers.
The initial outage impacted residents in the Okanagan Landing, Commonage and Bella Vista areas as well as the southwest part of downtown.
The utility said what exactly went wrong with their equipment to burn the power pole in the first place is still unclear.
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