Richmond appeared to have dodged the worst of Saturday’s windstorm, which ripped through the Lower Mainland, causing massive disruption to the power supply across the region.
Nevertheless, City of Richmond work crews still had lots to deal with in the days that have followed.
Although approximately 24,000 BC Hydro customers in Richmond were affected by the power outage caused by winds gusting up to 90 kilometres per hour, the vast majority of them had their power back by the early hours of Sunday.
Some of the outages affected the city’s water pumps, meaning back-up generators were used to stave off localized flooding.
One localized outage was along Gilbert Road near Steveston Highway, caused by a downed power line, which closed Gilbert in both directions from Saturday morning and into Monday.
Outages affected Watermania, the Richmond Ice Centre and the Thompson, West Richmond and Hamilton community centres.
Meanwhile, Steveston avoided any outages.
As of 11 a.m. on Monday, while around 50,000 customers were still without hydro in the Lower Mainland, only 286 of them were in Richmond.
Those local customers are being told they may have to wait until the early hours of Tuesday before having power again.
At the height of the outage on Saturday, around 400,000 BC Hydro customers were powerless, mostly due to downed trees from the unseasonably wild winds.
According to the City of Richmond, work crews had responded to 70 calls related to felled trees or broken branches.
"We’ve got crews out this morning doing inspections and cleanup, so those numbers may climb. Also, we are assessing playgrounds etc. to make sure all the equipment is safe," said city spokesperson Ted Townsend.
The Chinese Bunkhouse at Britannia Shipyards escaped major damage when parts of a tree fell on it; only minimal damage was reported, according to Townsend.
City crews claimed most of the trees that went down were weakened due to the drought-induced stress on their roots. Adding to the problem was the fact the deciduous trees had all their leaves attached, as they acted like giant sails.
Townsend said species such as green ash, cottonwood and poplar trees are most prone to wind damage.
First responders were also busy, according to Townsend; there was a 70 per cent increase in calls to Richmond Fire Rescue, from the previous two weekends.
Many of the calls involved traffic accidents. About 85 traffic signals lost their power at some point during the storm but they were all operational come Sunday, said Townsend.
*If you have a power outage story to tell, contact our newsroom at 604 249 3342 or email [email protected]
