Storm knocks out power throughout North Okanagan

Heritage Tree Branch on Power Line 23rd st.

By Jennifer Smith - Vernon Morning Star Published: August 07, 2012 9:00 AM 

Heritage Tree Branch on Power Line 23rd St.

Fire Station quick response to Power Line Fire

Heritage Tree Branch on Power Line 23rd St.

A storm knocked power out for nearly 6,000 Vernon, Coldstream and Spallumcheen residents Monday night.  Trees blew down over power lines, some catching fire and lightning even sparked a fire in the BX.  While BC Hydro restored power to the majority of residents Monday night, some are still in the dark. Approximately 271 customers living south of 46th Avenue, west of 13th Street, North of 39th Avenue and east of 20th Street are expected to have their power restored by noon today (Tuesday). The wind storm put another 2,312 residents east of Old Kamloops Road, north of Pottery Road and west of Lynx Road in the dark. West of Pleasant Valley Road and north of Kokanee Road power was out for several hours for 2,143 households. East of Grey Canal Road a brief outage occurred for 1,425 residents. Another 2,311 customers were cut off of power for just over an hour at 9 p.m. east of Old Kamloops Road, north of BX Road, west of L&A Road and south of Greenhow Road. "Hydro crews were quite busy," said BX-Swan Lake fire chief Bill Wacey, whose fire department also had a busy night manning trees on fire over power lines until Hydro crews could arrive. "Everybody was busy. "We had seven call outs since Saturday morning between lightning and trees over wires." An aspen tree caught fire after it came down across a power line on L&A Road. A similar situation took place on Francis Street. Fire crews were also busy trying to locate and extinguish lightning-caused fires. Lightning struck down near Hartnell Road, causing a fire that crews are back up extinguishing today. A lightning strike from more than a week ago also had firefighters busy on Saturday. Lightning struck down off of Aspen Road in the BX July 27, and festered in the ground until resurfacing over the weekend. "Lightning will go straight down into the roots," explains Wacey. "It sat down on the ground for a week and a bit and then popped up." While they did manage to douse the fire, with some help from forestry crews, a couple trucks sustained damage tackling the rough terrain. "It was an extremely inaccessible area," said Wacey of steep, shale-covered ground. The fire rating is currently sitting at high right now, with an extremely high drought code of 720. By measuring the amount of moisture in an area, the drought code is a formula used to determine how dry it is and how fast an area might burn. "Anything over 450 is considered extreme," said Wacey, also noting that the region isn't at the extremes of the Kelowna and Terrace Mountain time frames, which were in the 1,100s.