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Penticton  

Busy day for fire departments

South Okanagan firefighters were on the go Wednesday, after heavy snow blanketed the region overnight on Tuesday. 

In Penticton, the fire department responded to 14 calls, eight of them related to the snowfall, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 9 a.m.

"That is a lot. Normally we have four or five," said Deputy Fire Chief Dave Spalding.

The calls for downed power lines started coming in around 1 a.m., with the firefighters responding to five incidents. In some cases they were down, and in others there were trees against the lines.

The lines down was widespread, in the downtown, on Naramata Road and up Valleyview.

Once people started moving around, there were two motor vehicle accidents, with people sliding off the road. One incident was on Channel Parkway, the other was on Main Street in front of the RCMP station.

Spalding said there were no injuries to the best of his knowledge.

There were a number of first responder calls, as well, with one related to shovelling snow.

In Naramata, the crew had six calls in total because of the snow.

There were two power lines down, at Arawana Road and Ponderosa Drive and one off of Robinson Avenue.

As for the one on Robinson Avenue, the power mast was pulled off a resident's house, said Fire Chief Tony Trovao.

The rest of the calls were dealing with downed tree limbs and branches, some of which were partially blocking roads.

"There were things that needed to get done and cleaned up," said Trovao. "And not having power just added to the problems. It made the communication a lot tougher."

The Princeton Fire Department dealt with lots of downed power lines, burning branches on power lines and vehicle accidents, according to Fire Chief Eric Gregson.

In Oliver, the fire department had a couple of calls about lines down that they responded to as well.

Summerland firefighters were called out nine times in the early morning hours, to deal with fire alarms going off and people calling and saying they were hearing loud bangs because of electrical surges.

They also helped one injured person from their home, along with BC Ambulance.

Spalding said to avoid problems, people have to slow down when it snows and be careful around intersections of roads and driveways, because of vehicles possibly sliding into intersections.

It is also important to take it easy and not stress out when they are shovelling snow.

Lastly, have a good set of winter tires on with a good winter tread.



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