About 36,000 customers in B.C.'s Fraser Valley were still without power Saturday night after two ice storms slammed the region on Thursday and Friday.

Although the rain and wind had let up, the cold made fpr a frigid day of cleanup for residents and BC Hydro crews alike.

B.C.'s power provider has 75 crews working 16 hour days trying to restore electricity. Some workers have come from as far away as Vancouver Island, and more are on standby. BC Hydro said Mission and Abbotsford were the hardest hit by the storms.

A total of 134,000 customers lost power at some point. BC Hydro can't say exactly when customers will have their electricity it restored, and advised those without power to prepare for another cold night.

Aaron Graftstrom, an Abbotsford resident, says the temperature in his house dipped to 14 degrees after a day and a half without power.

"Nighttime was scary because branches were coming down, the tops of trees were breaking off," he said. "It's just cold."

His family is using blankets to stay warm and the barbecue to cook meals.

"You've just got to refocus and see what you can do with what you have," he said.

Staying warm turned dangerous for one family when a fire they started in their fireplace spread burned the walls of their home.

Outside, the destruction the storms left was clear in neighbourhoods throughout the valley with broken trees encased in ice lining several roads. Some Abbotsford residents took debris clearing into their own hands by using chainsaws to cut fallen trees into portable pieces.

"We've only been at it maybe an hour. This will probably take another hour or two," said Dano Debney who was cutting up a tree across from his property.

"From our house we can hear them dropping, like, nothing. Just crack, bang, crack, bang," he said. "The first night probably every half an hour a tree was cracking."

 

Debney been without power since about 1 a.m. on Thursday, but said that scenes like this are familiar from his time living "back east."

BC Hydro spent time working on a substation in Abbotsford that was damaged Friday night, using a helicopter to chip away at the ice. They hope fixing that will bring power back to thousands.

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Breanna Karstens-Smith