Christmas shoppers meander the darkened Park Royal waiting for the power to come back on after an outage at the West Vancouver substation Wednesday morning. 11,000 customers were affected.
Photograph by: NEWS , Mike Wakefield
Thousands of West Vancouver hydro customers were in the dark Wednesday morning as a heavy dump of wet snow brought minor chaos to the North Shore.
Roughly 11,000 residences and businesses between the Lions Gate Bridge and Caulfeild Drive - including Park Royal shopping centre - had their power knocked out around 9:20 a.m., according to B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer.
Oddly enough, the power outage had nothing to do with the nasty weather, Heer said.
"Something within the substation caused the entire circuit to trip, and that's a safety function that's built into the system, so if a transformer or another piece of equipment fails, those safeties kick in," she said. "But we're not sure why the circuit tripped in this instance.
A B.C. Hydro electrician resolved the problem around 10:45 a.m.
The outage resulted in a very busy morning for West Vancouver Fire and Rescue as the on-and-off power triggered dozens of fire alarms across the district.
Despite wicked road conditions, no accidents had been reported to the fire service during the turbulent morning, according to fire Chief Martin Ernst.