Massive Vancouver blackout to stretch into third day

Tag : Be Stretch
A massive power blackout in Vancouver's downtown corethat left residents and hotel guests in the dark and shut downlocal businesses was expected to stretch into a third day for somecustomers.
The power went out Monday morning when a fire in an undergroundvault knocked out electricity for more than 2,000 B.C. Hydrocustomers, about a quarter of the city's downtown.
Only half of the affected customers had their lights back byTuesday afternoon, and crews planned to work into the night.
But some areas weren't expected to have the power restored until atleast the end of the day Wednesday, said Gary Rodford, B.C Hydro'svice-president of field operations.
"They're going as hard as they can, they're going 24-7," Rodfordtold reporters Tuesday at the site of the fire as large trucksunspooled wire down a manhole.
"We've still got a lot of work to do ."
Rodford said a splice - an attachment that holds two or more wirestogether - failed and caught fire, damaging 14 circuits inside theunderground vault.
"We don't know what caused it to fail at this time," said Rodford.
"We know it wasn't overload, we know it's been in service a longtime."
B.C. Hydro said infrastructure such as traffic lights, transitstations and larger buildings was given first priority.
With traffic lights working once again, commuters had a relativelysmooth drive into the downtown Tuesday morning.
It was in stark contrast to the chaos a day earlier, when policeofficers directed vehicles at some intersections and drivers andpedestrians fumbled through four-way stop rules at others.
Telus said about a dozen commercial buildings lost phone serviceTuesday following the outage, and up to 60 buildings were at riskof being affected as well.
Many downtown shops were closed Tuesday because of the outage, butsome businesses were making due as the day's bright sunshineoffered some natural light.
"Thank God it's a sunny day," said Jason Hall, whose boutiqueclothing store was advertising a "blackout sale" to bring incustomers.
Most of the clothes on the racks in Hall's store are designed andmanufactured on-site, so some of the staff were working in a dimback room while others brought their work home with them.
"We're in the midst of production, so we have to get operating,"said Hall. "We're a small business. We need to make money on adaily basis and we can't stay closed."
At the luxury Fairmont Waterfront hotel, general manager FrancisParkinson said back-up generators were powering elevators,computers, water pumps and the kitchen, but the lights were out inthe rooms.
He said customers were given the option to move to another Fairmonthotel, but he said people who stayed seemed to be taking theblackout in stride.
"A lot of the ones that chose to stay took it as an adventure,"said Parkinson. "They just do family things. People are gettingused to talking to each other again."
Across the street at the Pan Pacific Hotel, the kitchen was closedand the backup power wasn't able to pump the water to the top fivefloors. General manger Steve Halliday said guests on those floorswere given a free night's stay and relocated.
It wasn't clear how much money the outage has cost localbusinesses, and B.C. Hydro said it was too early to talk aboutwhat, if anything, the Crown corporation would do to help.
"It's been really difficult for us to assess the cause, which inturn makes it difficult for us to even get into the issue of claimsand compensation," said Hydro spokeswoman Susan Danard. "It's justso early in the process."
Danard played down questions that the incident shows how vulnerablethe city's power grid could be when Vancouver hosts the WinterOlympics in 2010.
"Reliability for the Games is a very important issue, and in someways that's almost an easier task for us," she said.
"Those are new venues that are being built, but we're building notjust primary feeders but back-up feeders, so there will bealternate feeders that we can switch to should one feeder go down."
Vancouver police sent extra officers to patrol the streets to keepwatch for looters taking advantage of the blackout, but things werecalm overnight Monday, said Const. Jana McGuinness.
"We were fortunate that nothing like that occurred," saidMcGuinness.
"Also, a number of the businesses have hired some private security,so there's a few of them that have taken that extra security intotheir own hands."
McGuinness said the extra patrols would continue until the powerwas restored.
B.C. Hydro's woes continued Tuesday in another city after a failedcircuit breaker caused an explosion at a Kamloops substationTuesday morning, knocking out power to most of that Interior cityfor several hours.