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Central Okanagan  

Frustrated and hunkered down

Frustration rules the day in Peachland, as residents head into the second lengthy power outage of the week. 

After Wednesday's snowstorm damaged a power pole in West Kelowna, the power was forced off for nearly 24 hours in Peachland. Late Thursday afternoon, BC Hydro announced they would again be cutting the town's power between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. – up to eight hours – on Friday. 

Residents and business owners alike were less than pleased with that news. 

Wesley Bedford Jr. is a pharmacist at Guardian Pharmacy in Peachland. He said they are scrambling to meet the needs of their patients after two days without power. 

"If the town doesn't have power, I don't have internet and I can't fill prescriptions," he said. "I can do one day emergency supplies, just enough to get people going on their way. (But) they have cardiac conditions, diabetes, all kinds of stuff – I can't be closed, it's too important.

"That's our priority, to make sure our patients are able to get stuff, regardless if the city has power or not." 

Guardian Pharmacy has a generator which they use to keep their fridges cold and their medication safe, but others are not so lucky.

The owner of the Blue Rooster Cafe, Charlette Broadoway, said BC Hydro was vague about the repairs and why the work had to be done in the middle of a Friday.

"We're done for the day. I think it was poor planning, there was a better day they could have done it. They could have done it on a Monday – our slowest day of the week – now you have all these shopping dollars that are leaving Peachland," she said.

Broadoway thinks the residents of Peachland should expect council to take some action on the issue. 

"I think it needs to go higher. It needs to go to the higher governments and they need to pay more attention to us because we struggle and this is the worst time of year for this type of thing to happen," she said. "They literally made Peachland 'Black Friday' - I think BC Hydro got a little confused about what that meant."  

Minutes before the clock struck 10 a.m. employees at IGA were busily packing frozen items into shopping carts to move them into bigger coolers in the back.

Owner Harry Gough said at least this time they had a warning about the outage.

"The 24-hour one, that caught us off guard and we did have a substantial loss on that," he said. "As for today, we knew ahead so we were prepared. Unfortunately the loss of business we'll never replace, but we have fabulous staff, everybody has done more than what's asked of them."

One of the only places in Peachland with the lights on? The community centre.

Recreation coordinator Julie Van Den Born said, "We're open to the residents of Peachland if they want to come down and get out of the cold. We're putting the coffee pot on and we're basically just a place of refuge if they like." 

Programs are running as normal, with the fitness room open and pickleball going ahead as planned. 

"Better today than tomorrow, it's supposed to be colder tomorrow," said Cheryl Wiebe, director of community services. "We always put out to our people that call in, and our residents, that 'we are open' if anyone needs a place to ever be. That's what a community centre is for."



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