ICBC warns teens for prom
44-year-old woman missing
Stanley Cup Playoff etiquette
Senators reject field trip
'City within a city'
Searching landfill for woman
Israeli strike played down
Full Trump jury seated
World's largest election 
Lululemon cuts 100 jobs
Bitcoin's 'halving' arrives
Lawsuit over missing nuts
Rockets season ends in PG
Warriors bounced in opener
Warriors ready for Round 2
Pulp Fiction turns 30
Chris Pratt injured in movie
My name is not Elaine
Blame the birds.
Three power outages in three days affecting customers in parts of Lake Country and the Westside Road area were caused by ospreys building nests on the lines.
“What it comes down to is it’s osprey nests that have been causing a lot of havoc on the lines,” explains Dave Cooper with BC Hydro. “On Friday, actually, one of them caused a fire and actually a pole had to be replaced due to a fire.”
Even after the pole was replaced, Cooper said the raptors continued to bring debris onto the line as they tried to rebuild their nest. He adds that activity caused the outages on Saturday and Sunday.
On Friday and Saturday, the lights went out to about 3,500 customers and on Sunday about 2,000 were left in the dark.
A Castanet reader suggested one of the reasons the ospreys might be trying to build nests on the line is that a pair of Canada geese have taken over one of the nest platforms at Oceola Road and Lake Hill Drive. There was also a pair of geese on an osprey nest platform further north on the Pelmewash Parkway near Oyama Road a couple of weeks ago.
Cooper said the only thing BC Hydro can do to prevent the birds from attempting to nest on power poles is by patrolling the area and regularly removing sticks and other debris.
“When it comes to these naturally caused outages there’s not much that we can really do to prevent it. We have the (nesting) platforms, but unfortunately, when it comes to these things we can’t stop it from happening. We can only attend as there is an issue there.”
