Power restored to all BC Hydro customers impacted by NYE storm: utility

Five days after a New Year’s Eve storm knocked out power to around 160,000 BC Hydro customers, the utility said it’s restored power to the last remaining affected customers.

The utility said 35 customers in Johnson’s Landing area, in B.C.’s Kootenays, were the final group to have power restored.

They came back online just after 2 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 5, five days after the storm.

1:48 Some Shuswap BC Hydro customers told to brace for no power all weekend

The utility said the heavy snowfall and local terrain also made it difficult for crews to access the area.

The power restoration is being met with relief by those who lived with the multi-day outage.

Some in the North Shuswap were without power for at least four days, only getting consistent power back on Saturday.

To help residents cope with the outage, the Shuswap Emergency Program opened a temporary warming centre at the Lakeview Community Centre in Anglemont.

The president of the community centre society and local firefighter Jim Dingeldein said 20 or 30 people showed up at the warming station on Saturday for soup and coffee and to share stories of the outage.

2:36 Thousands without power for third day in BC’s Southern Interior

Dingeldein said many people got by with generators during the outage.

“We had a lot of trees down, so we were cutting trees down, trying to get the roads open, helping people get their generators started and hooked up,” he said.

“It was an opportunity for the neighbourhood to come together and everybody did.”

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While the power outages caused by the New Year’s Eve storm have been fixed, BC Hydro is still busy dealing with more recent power outages including thousands that lost power Sunday afternoon in the Lower Mainland.