‘It was really scary’: Huge flames, black smoke at BC Hydro fire

Flames and black smoke were towering into the air in Richmond on Dec. 15, 2015 after a BC Hydro power station caught fire. (CTV News).

Huge flames and thick black smoke towered into the air in Richmond Tuesday morning after a BC Hydro power station caught fire.

The blaze began around 5:40 a.m. at No. 4 Road and River Drive, but fire crews couldn’t fight the flames until 3.5 hours later, when power to the substation was shut off and the area was made safe by BC Hydro crews.

“Before we attack a substation we need to make sure it's de-energized to make sure it's safe for all members,” said Richmond Fire battalion chief Peter Price. “So we took our perimeters and monitored the area.”

Crews were finally allowed to access the fire around 9 a.m., and the blaze was extinguished shortly after.

BC Hydro VP of field operations David Lebeter believes old age may have been the cause of the blaze - the transformer that caught on fire was 44 years old, and contained 65,000 litres of fuel.

“Given the age of the transformer it’s probably the end of life, and I would suspect the insulation broke down inside the transformer,” he said. “But that’s what the investigation will have to determine.”

People living nearby said it sounded like a bomb went off when the fire first began.

“I heard a big bang and I looked around and I thought there's a fire in my house,” said Arti Chand, who lives across the street from the substation. “I looked outside and there was a big, huge flame…It was really scary.”

Only one industrial customer lost electricity, Lebeter added, as BC Hydro crews were able to manually reroute power. No one was injured in the blaze.

Transit in the area was rerouted away from the fire for several hours and several job sites were evacuated as a precaution because of the thick, black smoke.

“[It’s] a big concern for air quality,” said Price. “We had air monitoring being conducted.”

The cost of the fire was not immediately clear, and an investigation is underway.

With files from CTV Vancouver’s Nafeesa Karim