Power’s Back On – How Sweet It Is

Our power came back on at 5:20pm Friday evening which was a little over 30 hours from the time it first went out Thursday morning. We were advised by BC Hydro that they would likely get the power restored by 6pm so this just managed to sneak it in under the wire and were we ever happy about that. This was the longest power outage we’ve had in 22 years. It was so nice to hear the furnace come on, see our computer screens come to life and know that we could simply walk around the house without a flashlight.

There were several power trucks at this site a mile from our house

For our area, the main problem was a mile down Cowichan Bay Rd. where trees had taken out power lines in 3 locations all within 400 yds. of each other. I walked down to see what was going on in the afternoon and one of the power line workers told me it was going well and they expected to be done by dinnertime. He said his crew had been called over from Vancouver and they arrived on the first ferry with 4 trucks and a crew of 8 to handle several outages over the weekend.

The big trees had been cleared but small branches still covered the roads

I’ve always thought that linemen for power companies have an extremely dangerous job even more so than most police and firemen. I could be wrong about that but they end up working in the worst weather it seems although Friday here on the Island things were back to normal and we had blue skies, sunshine and it was warm.

Man, I hope these guys are sure the power’s off when they grab those wires

Down in Victoria, just 30 miles south, where Carrie and Mason live they escaped the storm altogether. Victoria has a habit of getting off light with weather disturbances. It’s a well know fact right across Canada that just adds to the mystique of Victoria being the banana belt of Canada.

Another fallen tree across our path at the Quarry Lake

With no electricity Friday morning we decided to go for a walk pretty early just for something to do. We wanted to stay in the sunshine so we opted not to go into the forest for a walk and instead chose the bright and sunny Cobble Hill Lake Quarry. Not far along the wide trail to the lake, we encountered a sign of yesterday’s storm as a tree had been blown right across the trail. We managed to get around that easily and were on our way again.

Smooth as glass on Friday morning!

When we got down to the Quarry Lake it was as smooth as glass.  I’m betting it wasn’t like that on Thursday morning. What a difference a day makes. Other than waiting for the power to come back on and going for walks off and on that was about my day Friday. I had unplugged all of our computer equipment prior to the power coming back on and then gradually plugged everything back in and brought our entire home network back up to speed with no problems. Whew!

Thanks for visiting!