BC HYDRO restored power early last evening to residents of Stewart and Meziadin after a tower on the unfinished Northwest Transmission Line fell over and struck a tower on the transmission line that serves them.
BC Hydro brought crews up from Vancouver to deal with the incident which took place late in the evening of March 18.
The location, in a remote area approximately 140 kilometres north of Terrace, meant crews had to first construct access to the location.
BC Hydro official Simi Heer said that people affected by the outage, which would include those who had food spoiled, can submit claims.
BC Hydro is investigating the cause of the Northwest Transmission Line tower collapse.
The $736 million project, which stretches from Terrace north to Bob Quinn on Hwy37 North, is 344 kilometres long and features more than 1,130 towers at locations ranging from earth to bedrock.
It's the second time in a month that a tower has fallen over.
Because of the BC Hydro investigation, Adam Budzinski, the president of Valard which is the prime contractor on the Northwest Transmission Line project, was hesitant to go into detail.
“I can tell you that in these two incidents, none of the structures were in their final [installation] state,” he said. “The permanent hardware did not fail and has not failed. The rate of failure for the permanent hardware is zero.”
“We've identified one further location on the project where the incident could be repeated and have eliminated that possibility,” he said.
The Northwest Transmission Line is due to be completed the end of May.