And then the lights go out

Throughout Sunday afternoon the lights had flickered occasionally across the city, but at 5:11 pm a wide swath of downtown Prince Rupert was thrown into darkness as a widespread power failure occurred in the downtown core.

The BC Hydro reporting map outlines a stretch of the downtown area from McBride Street to just past 11th street as in the dark, also affected by the main power outage was an area from the waterfront to 7th Avenue West, power was expected to return by 9 pm.
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In a separate outage, a small patch of Atlin Avenue further west where the power went out a close to 6 pm and won't be back on until 11 pm.

Hydro has listed the cause of the downtown power outage as under investigation thus far.

The power outages are just one of many inconveniences that the wind and rain have brought to north coast residents this Sunday, cellular service for Rogers customers has been disrupted all day long, with many theories offered up so far, but few concrete facts as to why the Rogers network has failed.

There were scattered reports of Internet problems through the CityWest system as well, though from all accounts their cel service has remained available through the day.

And for those seeking to travel the highway to the east, plans will have to be put on hold for the near future, the Highways Department closed Highway 16 at Agate creek on Sunday afternoon, as an avalanche hazard was considered too high for travel and extreme weather conditions made driving along the road dangerous as well. Some reports have it that the road won't be re-opened until at least noon on Monday.

Traffic around the city was hampered by large pools of water accumulating in a number of areas, as storm drains clogged and covered by the two weeks of snow couldn't handle the volume of melting snow and rain that began early Sunday morning. Some areas of the city featured large lakes of sorts slowing traffic to a crawl in order to navigate the standing water.

You can find the latest details on some of these troubles through a number of sources.

BC Hydro features a website update site, which includes maps of outages across the province, look over the latest details here.

Drive BC also has a website which offers updates on the troubled areas as well as highway camera views of weather conditions along Highway 16, you can check it out here.

Updates:

Jan 5 3:18 pn Ministry of Highways re-opens Highway 16
Jan 5 10:30 am Highway 16 to remain closed until at least noon today
Jan 4: 7:50 pm Power is reported to have returned to the downtown area at 7:30 this evening

Tuesday night windstorm causes problems east of Prince Rupert

The strong winds of Tuesday proved to be problematic for residents of Terrace and communities as far east as Vanderhoof, as BC Hydro had a number of power related issues to deal with Tuesday night and most of Wednesday.

A number of Public schools were closed in Terrace on Wednesday, as was Northwest Community College's Terrace campus due to the troubles, more than 3,000 Terrace residents spent a fair amount of time in the dark over the last twenty four hours.

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Storms Knock Out Power Throughout 250
By 250 News
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 09:31 AM

Terrace is the hardest hit after a wind and snow storm hammered the area over the past two days.

In Terrace, Hydro crews are scrambling to try and return power to 4,871 homes that are without power because of trees falling on the power lines.

Here in Prince George power was knocked off along Sharalene Dr resulting in 132 homes being left without power.

East and West on highway 97 a further 123 home are without power.

In Quesnel, Nazko Rd, 89 homes, power has been restored to other affected homes.
In Fraser Lake, 203 homes are without power , Vanderhoof 85, Hudsons Hope has a major power outage with 321 homes affected.

Meantime in addition to the wind a snow storm knocked power out to 391 homes and businesses in Stewart, Burns Lake is trying to dig out from a snow storm that cut power to 99 homes,


Power outages affect Northern B.C.
Terrace Standard
October 24, 2007

Residents from Vanderhoof west to Prince Rupert are slowly recovering from heavy windstorms last night which cut power to many areas of north western B.C.

In Terrace, Northwest Community College, for example, remains closed to morning and afternoon classes and was to re-open at 4 p.m. today (Wednesday).

Caledonia, Skeena and Parkside schools in the Horseshoe are closed as is Uplands Elementary on the bench.

Clarence Michiel and ET Kenney, also in the Horseshoe, are open but schools in Thornhill are closed.

Private schools Centennial Christian and Veritas are open.

More than 3,000 Terrace and area customers were affected by the outages