BC Hydro says August storm caused "single largest outage" ever, plans for power back by dinner

The public might owe BC Hydro a little slack in relation to delays restoring power to homes that have experienced outages since a storm struck the region beginning last weekend.

According to the Crown Corporation, power failures that began on Saturday (August 29) constitute “the single largest outage event in BC Hydro’s history”.

“BC Hydro estimates that 710,000 or 50 per cent of its 1.4 million customers on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland lost power due to Saturday’s windstorm,” reads a September 1 media release.

It compares the 2015 storm to one of similar size the region experienced in 2006. BC Hydro notes during that downpour, the peak number of customers who lost power was 240,300 while this past weekend, that number was 400,000.

“Crews have managed to restore power to more than 705,000 customers over a span of 72 hours,” the release continues. “As of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, about 3,500 BC Hydro customers, primarily in Surrey and Coquitlam remain without power. Some of these outages are new outages within the last 24 hours.”

“Since Saturday, BC Hydro and its contract crews have been working through 1,800 “trouble calls”—individual work orders—related to the storm. Typically, on average, BC Hydro crews respond to about 2,000 trouble calls a month across the province.”

The release states that BC Hydro “plans” to have power back for “to most customers” before dinner tonight (September 1).