It was shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Saturday December 6 when Sigurd Sabathil lost power at his home on Grafton Road. Sabathil called BC Hydro right away, and learned that he was not the first to report a power outage. He says he expected the power to be out for two, maybe three hours, but like the many other Bowen Islanders who live on the South Side, was surprised that it lasted until nearly 10 p.m.
The outage was caused by a driver who apparently swerved off Grafton Road in order to avoid a deer, and ended up hitting a hydro pole head-on.
Fire chief Ian Thompson arrived on the scene at roughly 10:45 a.m.
“The truck broke the hydro pole. It was still standing but barely,” says Thompson. “It was leaning really far over and I was concerned that if a big gust of wind came, it would collapse completely. So I babysat it until 3 p.m. when the hydro workers showed up.”
The workers from BC Hydro left another job site on the mainland to fix the problem on Bowen, but missed the 12 p.m. sailing from Horseshoe Bay to Snug Cove.
Upon arrival at the scene of the nearly broken pole, says BC Hydro spokesperson Mora Scott, they realized they’d need more equipment in order to fix it.
“They called in a vacuum truck, a heavy boom truck and traffic control right away,” says Scott. “But none of these were able to make it on to Bowen until 5 p.m. Typically, though, fixing a hydro pole can take between six and eight hours.”
Scott confirmed that 820 Bowen Islanders were affected by this power outage, all on the South side of Bowen.
The planned jazz concert at the Tunstall Bay clubhouse had to be cancelled, and many islanders living on that side of the island reported doing a lot of reading on that day.
Sigurd Sabathil says that without a generator he feels that he is not particularly well prepared for such a long power outage, but he and his wife were comfortable reading by candle light and warmed by his home’s woodstove. By dinner time however, the couple made the journey down to the Cove to enjoy a meal at the pub.
The decision to head down to the pub seemed to be a popular one among the islanders who did not have electricity for the day. The pub, alongside the other restaurants in the Cove, enjoyed a full house.
Pub owner, Glenn Cormier says that for him, the night was a blur.
“I was stuck in the kitchen and we were cooking consistently for three and a half hours,” he says. “My staff on the floor said that people were waiting a long time to get a seat, but they were mostly in good spirits. We’ve been fortunate to have had a fairly steady fall but this was really something else.”
Sabathil says that while the power outage lasted far longer than he had originally predicted, he was impressed by the response that he, personally got from BC Hydro.
“I have lived on Bowen for a very long time,” he says. “And the frequency of these incidents has been reduced dramatically. Also, BC Hydro called me again the next morning just to make sure my power was back on.”
