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Planned power outage to affect 9,000 Sunday morning

Roughly 9,000 customers living north of the Nechako River will be without electricity early Sunday morning. B.C. Hydro will shut off power for seven hours, from 3 a.m. to 10 a.m.
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Roughly 9,000 customers living north of the Nechako River will be without electricity early Sunday morning.

B.C. Hydro will shut off power for seven hours, from 3 a.m. to 10 a.m., to carry out work on towers holding up the transmission line feeding the Chief Lake substation.

Only those living along North Nechako Road will be unaffected. Otherwise, all households and businesses north of the river, including the Hart, Chief Lake, Nukko Lake, Salmon Valley and Shady Valley, will be affected.

Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer said the transmission line provides the power to the Chief Lake substation on Chief Lake Road and from the substation are circuits that go out to feed all the customers.

"With work being done to that transmission line, we have to cut power to the substation and of course all the customers that get their power from that spot [will be without service]," Gammer said.

He said one of the towers is being removed because it's in an area where there is erosion. In turn, the towers on either side will be strengthened and made taller to support the line.

Notifications of the planned outage have been sent out via advertising and social media.

In advance, customers are urged to turn off any electricity that may be sensitive to power surges and to make sure their smartphones are charged. More tips on dealing with outages are available at bchyrdo.com/outages.

"We tried to time this outage so that it would minimize the impact," Gammer said. "Now, we realize that part of that is in the breakfast hour and it's going to mean a little bit of a different start to peoples' days on Sunday but we've tried to shift the hours so that it would have a less impact.

"A lot of businesses won't get going until 10 or 11 in the morning on a Sunday anyway so we tried to minimize the impact as much as we could."

Power should be back on by about 10 a.m. Those who have not seen their service restored by about that time or shortly after are urged to call 1-888-POWERON (769-3766).

"That's something we're not expecting," Gammer said. "When we're restoring power around 10 Sunday morning, everybody should be back on but there could be the odd exception and so those people should call us."