Power restored to most of North Shore after windstorm downs power lines and poles

North Vancouver, B.C. -

Power has been restored to most of the North Shore after an overnight windstorm knocked out power to tens of thousands of BC Hydro customers.

About 22,000 customers were in the dark in the Lower Mainland and on the Sunshine Coast as of Tuesday at 8 a.m, forcing some schools to delay starts and businesses to remain closed for most of the day.

A large portion of the outages were on the North Shore, with BC Hydro listing a “transmission circuit failure” as the cause.

“Work is underway to repair the damage in West Vancouver and North Vancouver, including three poles that need to be replaced, in order to restore power to customers in the area by 4 p.m. today,” said an alert.

Amyn Esmail, who owns Minit-Tune & Brake near Capilano Mall told CTV News the outage meant he would lose some customers.

“Tons of cars are waiting to go in, but we can’t do anything,” he said.

“That just really makes our day even more harder and challenging,” Esmail added.

Next door at Mister Transmission, Rick McFegan forwarded the phones to his mobile, and said he had about 15 customers who were upset, but understanding.

“We can road test cars (but) that’s just about it,” McFegan said.

“We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work to get service restored as quickly as possible,” said BC Hydro Spokesperson Kyle Donaldson.

As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, a total of 1,310 customers remained without power on the Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast.