Smaller communities outside Prince George were among those hit when high winds blew through the northern half of the province over Tuesday night and knocked out power to more than 20,000 of customers in the process.
The B.C. Peace took the brunt, B.C. Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer said, as winds reached speeds as high as 100 km/h, but roughly 400 customers in Willow River-Upper Fraser and Summit Lake to Mackenzie junction were also affected for varying lengths of time.
Giscome school was also closed for the day.
"I do not want to minimize the Summit Lake and Willow-River Upper Fraser outages because while it's a small customer count relative to say what's going on in the Peace region where they've got 10,000 out, it's still the entire community - all of Upper Fraser, all of Willow River, all of Summit Lake - and they've been out numerous times," Gammer said in reference to the string of outages they've suffered this winter.
Gammer is asking people to refrain from moving trees from powerlines and instead, let Hydro know by calling 1-800-POWERON.
"They should treat the line as energized and stay away from that tree," Gammer said.
The outages stretched from Haida Gwaii to Fort Nelson as well as to Valemount. As of late Wednesday afternoon, there were 213 outages affecting 13,061 in the North region and zero outages in the Central Interior, according to the B.C. Hydro website.
