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Storm cancels Chemainus Christmas event

Chemainus’s Little Town Christmas was cancelled as result of another windstorm that walloped the Cowichan Valley over the weekend.
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The Cowichan River

Chemainus’s 10th annual Little Town Christmas was cancelled as result of another windstorm that walloped the Cowichan Valley over the weekend.

The event was slated to run “rain or shine” according to an information poster around town but it didn’t say anything about the wind.

The Saturday storm wasn’t as bad as the one on Thursday, Dec. 10, according to a BC Hydro official.

Spokesperson Karla Louwers said at its peak on Saturday about 2,000 customers in the Valley were without power.

“There were really two uniques sets of outages,” she said. “The first at about noon on Saturday.”

Workers had things fixed before 8 p.m. for most customers.

“And then we saw another gust in between 10 and 11 p.m.,” Louwers said.

It was unfortunate timing for the linemen.

“Crews were winding down to head home and we saw the next gust then,” she said.

The bulk of the power was restored by about 8 a.m. Sunday but some had to wait until closer to 5 p.m.

All told, the storm affected about 5,000 customers.

Louwers said five line crews and one tree crew were put to work in the Cowichan Valley.

All of the outages were tree-related.

“We have no formal preparation plans yet for any other storms,” Lowers said, noting it is storm season so crews are on standby.

“These sort of events are expected,” she said.

Recent storms have also hit the Cowichan Lake area hard.

Winds took down trees on Youbou Road on Thursday, with one large fir tree taking out Hydro lines to the community, causing an outage for more than 1,000 customers.

The outage began in the early morning hours and power wasn’t restored until after 3 p.m.

Torrential rains have also flooded a number of areas in the Valley, including Cowichan Bay and Tzouhalem Roads, and Lake Cowichan’s Saywell Park.



Sarah Simpson

About the Author: Sarah Simpson

I started my time with Black Press Media as an intern, before joining the Citizen in the summer of 2004.
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