A massive windstorm that hit the south coast on Sunday toppled trees on to Hydro lines, knocking out power to parts of West Vancouver and leaving ferry customers stranded at Horseshoe Bay after two sailings to Vancouver Island were cancelled Sunday night.
The North Shore was hit with about 75 millimetres of rain over the weekend, while winds gusted to about 74 kilometres an hour at West Vancouver’s Pt. Atkinson on Sunday.
Even higher winds in the Strait of Georgia caused B.C. Ferries to cancel both the 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. sailings to Departure Bay Sunday night, leaving a number of ferry customers stranded.
“We were completely sold out,” said Bree Stoddart, manager of the 23-room Horseshoe Bay Motel. “We had many desperate ferry customers. We turned away oodles and oodles of people.”
A total of 40 sailings were cancelled on nine different ferry routes because of the wind storm, said Deborah Marshall, spokeswoman for the corporation.
Winds coming down on power lines also resulted in about 1,700 customers being without power in West Vancouver and 500 households without power on Bowen Island at various points during the weekend.
A tree fell across four lanes of traffic on West Vancouver’s busy Taylor Way thoroughfare.
