Up front: Windstorm uproots Dominion, renews Cow Bay concerns page A3 News: Knife recovered in Cowichan River following stabbing page A3 For all the news of the Cowichan region as it happens, plus stories from around British Columbia, go to our website www.cowichannewsleader.com Your news leader since 1905
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Jim Lindsay of Central Powerlines works on an air brake switch, part of a power pole that fell to the ground near the juncture of Lakes and Tzouhalem roads from the extreme weather on Monday morning.
Andrew Leong
Weather bomb knocks Cowichan Valley for a loop Krista Siefken
News Leader Pictorial
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eavy wind and rain savaged trees and hydro lines early Monday morning, putting thousands of Cowichanians out of power. BC Hydro spokesman Ted Olynyk said about 9,500 homes in the Duncan area alone were without electricity on Monday morning, and tens of thousands more were powerless along the island’s east coast. “It’s what our internal weather
people call a weather bomb — it’s a very intense storm that’s hit the whole east coast,” Olynyk said. Hydro crews were busy restoring power in priority areas — where lines were down, or in areas with emergency and school facilities — while the storm continued to rage. Those in outlying areas were without power until Tuesday, Olynyk said. BC Hydro’s outage list con¿rmed there were approximately 120 homes in the area still without power on Tuesday. Environment Canada meteorolo-
gist David Jones, meanwhile, said the storm was the result of a “very intense and deepening low-pressure system” that at its peak blew winds between 115 to 130 kilometres per hour in the northern Strait of Georgia. “The worst of it is over now,” he con¿rmed late Monday morning. “There are a couple of storms heading our way Wednesday and Thursday, but they won’t be as intense.” That will be a relief to Cowichanians who battled battered foliage on Monday morning.
“Our neighbour to the west had a 150-foot tree uprooted on one side and fall into another tree, and we lost two ¿r trees, a Garry oak tree, and the wind pulled the wiring from our pump-house right off our house,” said Khenipsen Road resident Roma Croy. “Our other neighbour has a huge tree across their driveway. They can’t get out.” Croy also had to contend with the scattered remains of a large log boom that broke apart and spread out in front of her waterfront home after the wind picked up shortly after 5 a.m.
The gale also brought a red boat in Cowichan Bay ashore, and took trees down in its path across the Cowichan Valley. Fallen trees laid waste to everything from Wolfgang Lehwald’s porch on Garret Place to the home of Paci¿c Northwest Raptors’ eagles. “We had a huge ¿r crash into two of our eagle pens, basically destroying the pens,” PNR’s Robyn Radcliffe said. “We are very fortunate that both the eagles are ¿ne, and were both in their pens despite huge gaping holes in the roofs of each pen.”
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