Emergency crews and hydro workers are rushing to clean up the aftermath of a violent windstorm that tore through southwestern British Columbia on Saturday, causing extensive property damage and leaving approximately half a million people without power.

Officials say Metro Vancouver’s 911 line was overwhelmed as the windstorm uprooted countless trees and sent them crashing down onto power lines, cars, fences and homes.

The bulk of the damage and outages occurred in Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam, and Vancouver.

As of late Sunday evening, BC Hydro tweeted that 141,000 customers were still without power.

BC Hydro spokesperson Simi Heer said officials had hoped to restore power to most homes by Sunday night, however some neighbourhoods may experience outages until Monday.

According to the utility’s Twitter account, several neighbourhoods in Surrey, Coquitlam, and Langley have had their power restored.

“We’re continuing to make great progress,” Heer said Sunday afternoon. “We’re getting thousands of customers’ (power) restored each hour. Crews are out there and they’re working as hard and quickly and safely as they can.”

She said damage caused by the windstorm is “varied and extensive.”

“This is one of the worst storms we’ve seen for this region in years,” Heer said. “It’s unprecedented damage.”

In addition to the property and infrastructure damage, a woman in her 40s is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after a tree fell on her as she was walking with her daughter in Surrey, B.C.—one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. So far, no other cases of serious injury have been reported as a result of the windstorm.

Bear enclosure at zoo knocked down

The Metro Vancouver Regional District’s emergency program co-ordinator Rod Tulett said their emergency procedures performed “extremely well,” despite Saturday’s gales being its biggest test in nearly a decade.

Tulett said the district was better prepared after being caught off-guard in 2006 when a similar windstorm hit the Lower Mainland, uprooting numerous trees in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

“After the big windstorm (of 2006), a lot of our facilities received significant upgrades in their backup-power capability,” Tulett said. “We learned from that.”

The City of Vancouver said it received more than 1,000 weather-related calls regarding debris and damage on Saturday.

The Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove, B.C. also suffered extensive damage during the storm, said the Joe Henderson, the facility’s general manager. The powerful winds caused several fences to come down at the zoo—which was hosting a children’s birthday party at the time—including the barricade surrounding the grizzly bear enclosure.

“We followed our normal emergency protocol,” Henderson said. “Everyone was contained into a building.” The bears, he said, did not escape from the enclosure.

Residents in areas affected by the windstorm took to social media, using the hashtag #BCStorm to express a mix of both praise and criticism of BC Hydro’s response to the outages.

Strong winds also swept through Rock Creek in B.C.’s southern interior, where a 44-square-kilometre wildfire destroyed 30 homes earlier this month.

The storm triggered wind warnings from Environment Canada, and forced officials to temporarily close Stanley Park on Saturday. It also slowed service on the ferry between Victoria and the mainland.

The cost of the extensive property damage and storm cleanup has yet to be tallied.

Outages lead to apartment fire

Amid the thousands of calls about fallen trees and power outages, firefighters also responded to an apartment fire in Burnaby that officials say was likely caused by a lit candle.

Crews were called to the building at approximately 4:40 a.m. on Sunday. Firefighters said the ground floor of the building, which did not have power, was filled with flames when they arrived on the scene.

Only some contents in the building caught fire, not the structure itself, according to Burnaby Fire Department assistant chief Bryan Kirk.

Two people were transported to hospital for smoke inhalation, he said, but no one suffered life-threatening injuries.

Kirk said the fire was contained to one unit of the building, but firefighters turned off the gas to the complex as a precaution. That, and smoke from the blaze forced some 16 families from the building.

“It’s definitely rebuildable, that’s for sure,” Kirk said. “But these folks will be staying in a hotel for the next day or two until they get the power restored here.”

The fire was extinguished at around 3 p.m. Sunday.

With files from CTV Vancouver and The Canadian Press