The high winds that swept through Prince George Monday night gave Joan Paradis and Lenard Wiebe something to remember.
The two were sitting in the living room of their 938 Irwin St. home when, at about 6 p.m., they heard a loud bang.
They went outside and found one of four 50-foot-tall spruce trees planted along a stretch of the back yard had fallen over and landed on the back corner of the roof, narrowly missing the electrical feed.
About 15 feet of the top end, meanwhile, broke off and landed in the neighbour's driveway, then fell back onto a fence separating the two lots, knocking a part of that structure over.
Other than some roof damage, the home, which they figure is about 60 years old, held up remarkably well.
The lights flickered briefly with the impact but stayed on.
After getting assurances from Prince George Fire Rescue and BC Hydro that it was safe to do so, they remained in the home for the rest of the night.
The tree had broken off at its base and Wiebe suspects the topple was aided by some rot in its core.
"It was scary," Paradis said.
According Environment Canada by 7 p.m. winds from the south reached a peak of 67 km/h gusting to 85 km/h. By midnight they had died down but not before giving BC Hydro crews plenty to do as they scrambled to restore power.
More than 3,000 customers were affected with trees coming into contact with powerlines providing much of the trouble, BC Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer said.
However, he noted that one of the largest outages, which affected 1,632 customers west of Guay Road, south of Seventh Avenue, east of Highway 16 and north of Proppe Lane, was caused by either a mud or snow slide. It lasted about two hours.
Other pockets hit included the city's downtown, the Chief Lake-Ness Lake area and Buckhorn.
Outages lasted from about a half-hour to as much as six hours in outlying areas.
"The earliest outage that I could see was right before two o'clock in the afternoon and our crews worked until after midnight," Gammer said. "So it was busy, absolutely."
Gammer asked anyone who encounters trees across powerlines to refrain from trying to deal with the matter themselves.
"We still hear about people who get out their with their chainsaws and try to help us out and we really want people to hold off on doing something like that," Gammer said.
"They don't know whether that line may be energized."
Instead, simply call 1-888-POWER-ON and report the event.
Hydro crews will get to the site on a priority basis.
