BC Hydro crews responded to more than 61,000 calls for service in 2025, but seven stood out to the utility as highly unusual. The company published its list of most memorable calls on Tuesday, starting with an inflatable Godzilla that got swept into power lines at a car dealership in Nanaimo earlier this month. The other six items on the list happened in spring and summer. In May, “a group of neighbourhood kids in Sidney” were practising their casting and accidentally hooked power lines, according to BC Hydro. The incident caused an outage for one customer, and crews were dispatched to remove two fishing lures and lines from the electrical wires. That same month, a customer in Kelowna called to report “an alarming buzzing sound” they feared was a line issue. It turned out to be cicadas. Another incident in July made national headlines. An osprey dropped a fish onto a power line in Ashcroft, in the middle of wildfire season. “Fire crews, BC Hydro workers and local ranchers worked together” to extinguish the small fire that resulted from the fried fish and caused an outage for 943 customers. The following month, another osprey dropped a fish on BC Hydro wires, this time in Quesnel. Fortunately, no fire resulted this time and only six customers suffered outages. Crews did have to replace a hydro pole, though. In another July incident, a beaver brought down a large tree “across multiple spans of wire” near the small community of Horsefly, knocking out power to 375 customers. Among the spans of wire that came down was a river crossing, which created “challenging conditions” for BC Hydro crews, according to the company. The largest outage on the year-end list occurred in Delta, also in July. The utility says 4,636 customers lost power when a crow collided with a transformer, knocking out “an entire feeder.” While most of these calls were not the result of human error, some were, and BC Hydro says many outages are preventable. The utility urges people to avoid flying kites, drones or balloons near power lines and to secure items that could blow away. “Always keep at least three metres, about the length of a four-door car, between yourself, tools, and power lines,” BC Hydro said in its statement accompanying the unusual calls list. “If you see a downed or damaged line, stay back at least 10 metres, the length of a city bus, and call 911.”
