8 - Sunday, February 12, 1989 - North Shore News

POWER CUTAGES IN LIONS BAY
Hydro service leaves residents cold

ACCORDING TO B.C. Hydro, the power problems plagu-

ing Lions Bay residents will be substantially alleviated in the

future.

While all of Lions Bay suffered
from power outages during the ex-
treme cold last week, one area ——
including the general store and a
strip of several! residential streets
— was particularly hard hit.

Residents of the affected area
attended Monday night's village
council meeting to voice the con-
cern that their streets were always
the ‘‘first off, last on,"’ in the
event of a black-out.

In the week of Feb. 5 to II,
power was off in periods fram late
Tuesday night to Friday, and for a
few hours on the Sunday. Accord-
ing to residents, temperatures in
some houses fell to below freezing
and some were forced to vacate
their premises in favor of the
warmth afforded by a hotel room.

B.C. Hydro crews spent much of

CHERRY”

By PEGGY TRENDELLWHITTAKER

News Reporter

that week in the village trying to
rectify the situation, but Bruce
Nessel, owner of the Lions Bay
General Store, told council that the
crews told him the repairs they had
done were only a ‘Band-Aid fix."

Since then. however. Hydro has
made adjustments to the system
that it says should solve the pro-
blem once and for all.

Gary Rodford, Hydro’s senior
line supervisor for much of the
Lower Mainland, said that while
fallen trees caused the initial black-
outs, many of the problems arose
from severely overloaded = trans-
formers in the afflicted area.

Sunday’s black-out, he noted,
was the result of everyone turning

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up the furnace in an attempt to
regain the heat they had lost dur-
ing the outages of the previous
week. Under the increased power
demand, the system gradually
deteriorated and finally blew Sun-
day morning.

He cou!d not say whether or not
the overloaded situation was duc
to the design of the system, but

throughout the whole system.

While he said he hoped the
rebalanced load will eliminate
future overload problems, he add-
ed it will take another really cold
snap to test the new system.

In the meantime, Rodford has
requested B.C. Hydro engineers to
study the electrical load in Lions
Bay in case more measures should

HYDRO SERVICE COMMENT: SEE EDITORIAL PAGE 6

said he suspects that individual
houscholds have gradually been
increasing their power usage
through the addition of such items
as Jacuzzis or microwaves. “When
you have 20 or 30 people doing
that, it adds a considerable load to
that portion of the circuit.”
Rodford said crews had been
working Monday anc Tuesday,
“heavying up’? the transformers
and re-balancing the load

be taken ‘before things get out of
hand."*

While the residents at council
were pleased to learn that such
steps were being taken, questions
were raised as to Hydro’s liability
for their hotel bills and for the in-
creased amount of power required
to reheat their homes after the
outages.

Peter McMullan, public affairs
employee with B.C. Hydro, said,

‘7

“T have never, ever heard of us of-
fering to pay accommodation for
someone during an outage...even
in the case of an overloaded situa-
tion."*

Nor did he believe Hydro would
be willing to pay increased heating
costs: ‘Regardless of the cold, I
don't see us subsidizing heating
bills.”"

As far as McMullan was aware,
the only compensation Hydro
would offer would be in the case
ef an electrical appliance damaged
due to a power failure.

Lions Bay Council voted to
write B.C. Hydro, requesting a let-
ter explaining what action had
been taken to correct the overload
situation.

“Wf they can explain to us what
was done, ['m sure it would make
everyone feel better,’’ agreed
storeowner Nessel.

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