Thanks to the guys at Fortis

I am one of the many Fortis customers here in Olalla who benefit from the hard and at times dangerous work that the guys from Fortis (Oliver office) perform.

Electricity in our homes is ubiquitous and we don't realize it until its gone, now what... where are the candles.

On this past Friday, August 14th, there was a power outage here in Olalla caused by a lightning strike and subsequent fire near and on a power pole. The fire crew from Keremeos were on scene quickly and extinguished the fire, thank you Keremeos Volunteer Fire Department!

Then the Fortis guys from Oliver were here working to repair the damage during terrible weather conditions, very strong wind gusts, intermittent heavy rain, and lightning in the area. During a lightning storm the guys don't use their lift trucks to repair electrical damage, they use their spikes to climb the pole, old school method. Under very windy and wet conditions they had our power back up in just over 3 hours, incredible work gentlemen, Thank you!

These guys work very long during outages, maxing out their 16 hour shifts then 8 hours rest and back at it again, wow.

This past weekend has seen them very busy in Oliver repairing damage caused by the fires there, again dangerous work performed over long hours, no concept of a weekend off for these guys.

Thank You, Steve Burnell, Elliot Bouchard, Dustin Thompson, Scott Minsull and their supervisor Todd Romano. You guys are our neighbours and to some, friends. Your work is greatly appreciated. You put yourselves in harms way, so we can have our electricity, Thank you again!
 
When we see one of these FortisBC guys, tell them thank-you.

Sincerely,
Kevin Hoffmann