UPDATE: Power restored after storm cut off thousands of residents

THOMPSON-OKANAGAN – Power has been restored to most customers in the Thompson-Okanagan following widespread outages affecting over 16,000 customers at their peak.

Sabrina Locicero with B.C. Hydro says power in the Thompson-Okanagan and Shuswap regions is back on for the vast majority of customers. Only ten customers remained without power as of Friday morning.

B.C. Hydro attributes the outages to a combination of lightning, wind storms and trees down across wires during a massive thunderstorm. The majority of the outages occurred Wednesday between 4:30-5:30 p.m. Locicero says crews are still assessing and determining whether further infrastructure repairs are required.

Fortis B.C. customers in Kelowna neighbourhoods, such as Rutland and Mission, were also impacted by the storm, though spokesperson David Wylie says most of the 5,000 affected households had power back on that evening. Fortis B.C. dealt with an additional 4,000 customers in the Kootenays who lost power, but again, most lines have been restored. Only six customers within the Kelowna and Kootenay regions remain without power, and crews are working intensively on those repairs.

The storm that tracked through the region also flooded streets and dropped hail across the region. Power lines down east of Sicamous have also closed all but one lane on Highway 1. Hydro lines are also down near Revelstoke and several Interior highways are seeing water pooling in some areas.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Jennifer Stahn at jstahn@infonews.ca or call 250-819-3723. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.

— updated at 6:30 a.m., July 23, 2014 to include new information from B.C. Hydro and FortisBC

— updated at 7:10 a.m., July 24, 2014 to include information from Drive B.C.

—updated at 3:30 p.m. July 25, 2014 to say power was restored to the majority of customers.