Thousands of people in Shawnigan Lake woke up without power on Thursday and may not get it restored until Friday following a chaotic winter storm.
Hydro crews worked throughout the day to restore power to tens of thousands of people on Vancouver Island.
At its peak BC Hydro says 25,000 homes experienced outages.
Cowichan Valley, including Shawnigan Lake, was hit the hardest with 12,000 customers affected.
“We hope to have a lot of customers up by the end of the day, unfortunately not everyone will be up by the end of the day,” said BC Hydro’s Ted Olynyk. “They’ll have to go in to tomorrow before we see restoration complete in the Cowichan Valley.”
The heavy snow mixed with rain weighed down branches, causing limbs to break and trees to take out power lines.
Fifteen crews were working on the outages and reinforcements were brought in from the Mainland.
Winds are expected to pick up Thursday night and BC Hydro that could lead to more outages.
