Trees falling across wires knocked out power to thousands of customers in the central and north Island, the Gulf Islands and at least one building in Victoria early this morning.
Environment Canada had issued a wind warning for Campbell River, forecasting winds gusting up to 90 km/h. Trees across power lines and fallen wires are cited as the cause in two outages, with the rest under investigation.
Courtenay also has a couple of thousand customers without power, with a fallen tree cited as the cause in one outage of 331 customers, with the remainder under investigation.
Port Alice has an outage affecting more than 600 customers in each community and Zeballos has about 200 without electricity.
A fallen tree in the 1500-block of Richmond Avenue at Oak Bay Avenue this morning knocked out power to at least one building.
Victoria Fire Department was alerted about the fallen tree at about 2 a.m. and said the road was cleared.
B.C. Hydro’s online power outage report shows power went out at 1:46 a.m., crews arrived at 5:30 a.m. and power was restored after about 10:30 a.m.
Fallen trees are common in the fall, especially during windstorms and after periods of drought followed by considerable rain.
