Westside Road residents were left in the dark for more than 14 hours on Saturday after a power outage cut service to over 2,500 B.C. Hydro customers along Okanagan Lake.The blackout began 
at around 6 a.m. as a planned outage to replace power poles which affected just 60 customers, according to Hydro spokeswoman Charmane Edwards. However, after workers attempted to restore power a larger outage blanketed the Westside area.“To begin with it was a planned outage; they were doing maintenance work,” Edwards said. “Crews were out all day trying to resolve the issue.”Westshore Estates resident Gary Lewis said he had no power from 6 a.m. until nearly 8:30 p.m. The retired B.C. Hydro engineer said it was one of the worst outages he’s experienced.“This is the worst power outage I’ve experienced in British Columbia anywhere,” he said. “Any outage that goes over six hours is really serious.”Lewis said that in general the power supply has been good. He said this is the first time he’s lost power for such a lengthy period.“I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said. “Even with Hurricane Frieda in Vancouver that knocked over trees and power lines you didn’t have power out for that length of time.”The cause is still under investigation and Edwards said on Sunday it was too early to speculate that the planned outage caused the later blackouts. She said at its height 2,500 customers were affected while a pocket of 175 homes had no power for a longer stretch of time.“I wouldn’t make that link at this point,” she said. “The other outages are still under investigation.”Shauna Schneider who lives on nearby Pinecrest Road said that at different times throughout the day the power would come back on for less than a minute and then shut off again. At about 5:30 p.m. the power came back on for 10 minutes but then shut off again for another two hours, she said.“There are a lot of people who aren’t happy about it,” she said. “If it was the dead of winter and it was out for that long, then maybe it would have been an issue.”
Residents were told the outage was for pole replacement, but Schneider said that the pole she and her neighbours thought would be replaced had still not been replaced Sunday afternoon.Schneider, who has lived in the area for 10 years, said that when she and her family first moved to the area there were power problems. However, she said there hadn’t been any lengthy power outages more recently.“Living out here years ago we used to have stuff like this happen,” she said. “We would go a whole day without power sometimes.”Up the road from Schneider, other homes on Pinecrest, which operate on a different grid, were unaffected by the power outage, she said.Edwards said the planned outage was advertised in advance through radio ads. However, Lewis said he received no warning of the blackout and Schneider said she had heard about the blackout but didn't know when it was scheduled to happen.
at around 6 a.m. as a planned outage to replace power poles which affected just 60 customers, according to Hydro spokeswoman Charmane Edwards. However, after workers attempted to restore power a larger outage blanketed the Westside area.“To begin with it was a planned outage; they were doing maintenance work,” Edwards said. “Crews were out all day trying to resolve the issue.”Westshore Estates resident Gary Lewis said he had no power from 6 a.m. until nearly 8:30 p.m. The retired B.C. Hydro engineer said it was one of the worst outages he’s experienced.“This is the worst power outage I’ve experienced in British Columbia anywhere,” he said. “Any outage that goes over six hours is really serious.”Lewis said that in general the power supply has been good. He said this is the first time he’s lost power for such a lengthy period.“I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said. “Even with Hurricane Frieda in Vancouver that knocked over trees and power lines you didn’t have power out for that length of time.”The cause is still under investigation and Edwards said on Sunday it was too early to speculate that the planned outage caused the later blackouts. She said at its height 2,500 customers were affected while a pocket of 175 homes had no power for a longer stretch of time.“I wouldn’t make that link at this point,” she said. “The other outages are still under investigation.”Shauna Schneider who lives on nearby Pinecrest Road said that at different times throughout the day the power would come back on for less than a minute and then shut off again. At about 5:30 p.m. the power came back on for 10 minutes but then shut off again for another two hours, she said.“There are a lot of people who aren’t happy about it,” she said. “If it was the dead of winter and it was out for that long, then maybe it would have been an issue.”
Residents were told the outage was for pole replacement, but Schneider said that the pole she and her neighbours thought would be replaced had still not been replaced Sunday afternoon.Schneider, who has lived in the area for 10 years, said that when she and her family first moved to the area there were power problems. However, she said there hadn’t been any lengthy power outages more recently.“Living out here years ago we used to have stuff like this happen,” she said. “We would go a whole day without power sometimes.”Up the road from Schneider, other homes on Pinecrest, which operate on a different grid, were unaffected by the power outage, she said.Edwards said the planned outage was advertised in advance through radio ads. However, Lewis said he received no warning of the blackout and Schneider said she had heard about the blackout but didn't know when it was scheduled to happen.
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