Power mostly restored after outage affects thousands in northwest B.C.

Andrew Kurjata · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 12, 2025 7:48 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

More than 45,000 customers crossed northwest B.C. were without powerfulness aft an outage astatine astir 4:20 p.m. PT Thursday.

The B.C. Hydro dashboard showed it impacted the full portion from Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres westbound of Prince George, each the mode to Prince Rupert, much than 500 kilometres distant arsenic the crow flies.

Haida Gwaii and parts of the acold northwest astir Stewart were besides impacted.

The powerfulness inferior said a lightning onslaught was to blame, with crews moving to "restore work arsenic rapidly arsenic possible."

B.C. Hydro spokesperson Mike Kellett said restoration enactment would person to beryllium done successful stages, starting successful Vanderhoof and moving westward.

Kellett said owed to the wide standard of the outage, it was apt that the sole transmission enactment supplying power from Prince George to Prince Rupert had been impacted. 

According to the B.C. Hydro dashboard, powerfulness was restored to astir customers a fewer hours later. The company's online dashboard showed that arsenic of 9:25 p.m. PT less than 200 customers successful the affected country were inactive without power.

Northwest B.C. does not person backup transmission lines, which makes the portion susceptible to large-scale outages. 

In 2024, B.C. Premier David Eby announced plans to physique caller transmission lines betwixt Prince George and Terrace successful bid to supply much reliable powerfulness to concern customers successful the region.

There were no reports of outages from telephone oregon net providers, though the portion has besides experienced nonaccomplishment of communications successful the past, specified arsenic a 2022 incidental successful which a beaver downed a histrion onto immoderate lines, knocking retired cellphones and net for respective hours.