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UPDATED: Storm ends, clean-up underway

Heavy winds that led to downed trees, ferry cancellations and thousands of properties being left without power have died down, but some parts of the North Shore are still a mess. It seems to have abated.

Heavy winds that led to downed trees, ferry cancellations and thousands of properties being left without power have died down, but some parts of the North Shore are still a mess.

It seems to have abated. The winds came through and did the damage and after noon, its been more or less just clean up and following up on the wires down, said West Vancouver fire and rescue chief Jim Cook.

Environment Canada lifted the wind warning for the region just before 2 p.m. Winds gusted between 60 and 80 kilometres per hour in the southern part of Howe Sound for much of the morning.

Weve had trees down and power lines down in a couple areas here in West Van and I know our partners in North Van have seen the same small pockets of power outages, Cook added.

More than 3,000 properties on the North Shore were left without power during the day, according to BC Hydro.

In the largest outage, 2,369 customers between Lonsdale Avenue and Baird Road, north of 21st Street lost power around 11:35 a.m. Another 782 customers have lost power between Xwemelch'stn (Capilano 5 Reserve) and Park Royal Shopping Centre due to a downed wire. While the power at the mall itself stayed on, some of the surrounding restaurants went dark.

BC Hydros outage website stated most outages on the North Shore should be fixed by 4 p.m., however Cook said hydro crews had still not arrived on the scene of a downed tree and wire in 400-block of Keith Road as of 3:30 p.m.

Some of the trees have fallen on power lines and theyre still live, so we wont be doing anything, he said.

The 3,200 customers still waiting for the lights to come as of 4:30 p.m. will likely have to wait into the evening, according to BC Hydro spokeswoman Jennifer Young.

Its a really fluid situation. It was a pretty significant storm so we are working to get customers on as soon as possible, and the estimated times are just that estimates, Young said.

Young said crews have been working since 5 a.m., and at the peak of the storm around noon, 132,000 customers on the South Coast were without power.

We definitely appreciate peoples patience as we work to get the power back on, she said.

Because of heavy winds and high waves on the Strait of Georgia, B.C. Ferries cancelled all sailings between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay until 3 p.m. and sailings from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale and Snug Cove fell behind schedule.

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