Brief but massive power outage affects more than 120,000 BC Hydro customers on Vancouver Island

Vancouver — Many Vancouver Island residents from Victoria to Port Alberni lost power Saturday morning in a brief but major outage, according to BC Hydro.

A spokesperson for the electricity provider told CTV News in an email that more than 120,000 customers lost power just before 10 a.m.

"The cause of the outage was not related to weather or forest fires," the spokesperson said. "It was related to some work we were completing on a transmission cable serving the Island, which caused our overload protection equipment to initiate, resulting in the large outage."

Those who lost power were primarily in Victoria and the surrounding areas, but the outage stretched to some customers in the Cowichan Valley and as far away as Port Alberni.

BC Hydro said "the vast majority" of customers had their power restored in less than 30 minutes.

As of 12:15 p.m. Saturday, there was only one active outage on southern Vancouver Island, and it was affecting just 51 customers.

"There was no damage to the system and this is why we were able to restore power to our customers so quickly," BC Hydro said.