Vancouver Island power outage leaves thousands in the dark

Cindy E. Harnett
Victoria Times Colonist
Sunday, October 12, 2008

A massive power outage that caused many Vancouver Island families to eat Thanksgiving dinner by candlelight created chaos for the island's emergency workers.

Firefighters and police officers responded to dozens of burglar alarms and calls from people trapped in elevators.

"It was mayhem," said Victoria firefighter Patricia Core. "Every line was lit up and it was impossible to keep up. It was craziness. I've never seen it like that in here."

Firefighters responded to "multiple, multiple" calls from people trapped in elevators and alarms sounding. "There were no tragedies, thank goodness," Ms. Core said.

Others mistook the smoke from generators starting up to be fires. More still called the fire department to find out why the city had slipped into darkness.

The massive power failure put much of southern Vancouver Island in the dark at about 5:40 p.m. PT. About an hour later power was restored to areas around Victoria. The rest of the Island was back on the power grid shortly afterwards, said B.C. Hydro spokesman Ted Olynyk.

Saanich, B.C., Police Staff Sgt. Gary Schenk said much of the chaos for police started when the power was re-started about 6:40 p.m.

"I can't remember a power outage of this scope," Sgt. Schenk said. While some traffic lights continued to function on back-up power at major intersections, other lights were out during the power outage. There were no known traffic accidents as a result, Sgt. Schenk said. "We're relieved it was as short as it was," Sgt. Schenk said.

However, when the lights came back on, it seemed like "basically half the alarms in the municipality went off," he said. Because police couldn't assume the alarms going off in businesses and households were false, officers were sent out to investigate each call.

"They just kept going to the next one, and the next one, until they were all done," he said.

Although Saanich, a city in the greater Victoria region, has a three-strikes policy for false alarms at homes and businesses which can result in a hefty fine, the police cancelled the policy for Sunday night with the understanding the power failure was to blame. Meanwhile, the power failure turned out to be a blessing in disguise for some.

"Thankfully we had just finished cooking a huge spread for Thanksgiving dinner when the power went out so we lit candles and had a family feast by candle light," said Victoria Times Colonist reader Matt Amedro in a post to the newspaper's website. "It was nice."