Rural residents hunker down, wait for power
‘Out here we expect to be the last of the last,’ Surrey farmer says
SURREY — The clump of big cottonwood trees came from Washington state, flew across the international border and came to rest in a thunderous crash at the entrance to the Breaks family farm property on Zero Avenue.
“My son (Dustin) was sleeping in that bedroom,” Ken Breaks says, pointing to one of two homes on the 22-hectare former dairy operation. “He said it shook the whole house.”
That happened when the big windstorm hit Saturday morning.
Since then, no one has arrived to remove the trees and a power line still hangs on the driveway. Zero Avenue — a thoroughfare along the 49th parallel linking Surrey with Langley and Abbotsford — remains closed just east of the Pacific Highway border crossing, with no sign at 184 Street informing westbound motorists to turn back.
Breaks allows it will take a “miracle” for electrical power to be restored and the site cleaned up before Tuesday morning — three full days after the fact.
Still, he draws something positive from the event. “It used to be so dark,” he said with a smile. “This has opened it up. Lots of daylight now.”
Surrey and Langley were hit hard by the storm. As of Monday afternoon, they accounted for about 22,000 of the roughly 37,000 BC Hydro customers without power.
Breaks put up a sign on Zero Avenue next to tape closing off the route, reading: “12,000 volts. Turn your ass around!” It even included a drawing of a stick figure getting fried.
The effort didn’t have much impact, especially with cyclists who frequented the road over the weekend.
“We were worried 10-speeders would get electrocuted,” he said. “I warned one guy. He said, ‘thanks,’ then kept on going.”
Breaks has his own generator due to a history of power outages in the area from falling trees and the fact rural areas are often slow to get power restored.
“Out here,” he said, “we expect to be the last of the last.”
The generator has provided him with electricity but not for drawing water from his well, forcing him to go off-site to fill six camping-style containers.
Private wells are common in rural areas where residents are not connected to city water systems, but they still require electricity to bring the water to the surface.
In south Langley, fallen maple trees continued to lean Monday afternoon against power lines on 8th Avenue near 232 Street. Across the road, Bill Latimer shook his head at how ill-prepared authorities are to handle a windstorm — much less something as serious as an earthquake.
“This country would be in big trouble if there was a catastrophe,” said Latimer, who is on sick leave from a trucking job. “It’s been an eye-opener, that’s for sure.”
He said that on Saturday morning he couldn’t reach anyone at BC Hydro and tried for more than half an hour to get through to 911 to inform them the tree was on 8th Avenue and posed a hazard.
The RCMP put up tape to close the road on Saturday night, he said, but “some smart ass in a four-by-four blew right through it.” Langley volunteer firefighters showed up Sunday morning to remove the tree from the road but were equipped with only an axe.
“I had to give them a chainsaw,” Latimer said. “What kind of a fire truck is that?”
Latimer said he has a generator that has continued to provide electricity to access his well water but is not hooked up to the house. He lost much of his freezer food, but a friend who works at a cold-storage facility saved a couple of turkeys, some steaks and chicken legs.
“I just bought all this stuff at Costco the day before. We were going to have people over,” he said.
His greenhouse, with a replacement value of $8,000, was also destroyed by the storm, he said. Just around the corner, a Hydro crew Monday afternoon removed a power line from the road outside Tammy Charbonneau’s property on 232 Street. Fallen trees continued to block one lane.
While Charbonneau builds a barn and new home on the fourhectare property, she maintains a home in Cloverdale. That’s where she’s been filling up eight five-gallon containers of water per day for her three horses.
“No electricity, that’s the big thing,” she said of well access.
Her property suffered minimal damage, she said, probably partly due to pruning of trees last spring.