Power coming back in North Okanagan, Shuswap as crews prepare for more snow

With more snow in the forecast, BC Hydro is cautioning residents to be prepared for further outages in the North Okanagan, Shuswap, Thompson and Kootenay regions.

BC Hydro says on its website today, Jan. 3, it continues to deal with 50 outages affecting 2,644 customers in the Okanagan-Kootenay region and 118 outages affecting 2,440 customers in the Thompson-Shuswap region.

Crews made good progress overnight with restoration efforts continuing through today in small outage pockets in rural and hard to reach areas of the North Okanagan, Shuswap and outside of Kamloops. But the utility urges residents to be prepared as they may have further outages to deal with more snow forecast to fall today and tomorrow.

Vernon city councillor Kari Gares says power was restored to her lake house in Mara last night after being in the dark for around 60 hours. She says she could see crews working through yesterday’s snowfall making repairs line by line in their area.

“There was a huge accumulation of snow around Sicamous, Mara, Enderby and Grindrod. It took down a lot of trees and with them, power lines,” she says.

Gares, who lives in Coldstream, went to her lake house to keep an eye on things and dig out after the heavy snowfall.

“Considering the amount of repairs to be made, BC Hydro has done a pretty good job, in my opinion,” she says. “Where our lake house is located we don’t expect BC Hydro to get to us right away. This power outage is only affecting 207 residents.”

“We’re used to power outages and we’ve been well prepared, as are others in the area who have generators and wood burning stoves for backup. It’s not that unusual, and the more prepared you are, if you’ve experienced it before, the less impact it has.”

For the latest on outages in your area go to the BC Hydro website here.

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