Planned power interruption irks Commercial Drive shops
A dozen Commercial Drive shops and services expecting to lose business today during a scheduled power interruption have sent a letter to B.C. Hydro demanding it either scrap its plan or provide them with an alternate power source.
In an emailed statement, B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer said the interruption is required to repair several power poles that are leaning over and that could pose a threat to safety.
“It is unsafe for crews to do this work with live lines, so we need to de-energize a portion of the system,” Heer said. “However, we are doing our best to limit the impact on affected customers.”
The interruption will affect up to 475 business and residential customers between Commercial and Victoria drives and between Parker and William streets, Heer said. B.C. Hydro delivered notices of the interruption on Sept. 21. It was originally expected to last from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., but was later reduced to three hours for most customers.
Sally Traynor, owner of Manifesto Salon, said she was forced to cancel or reschedule two dozen appointments and tell three stylists to take the day off because of the situation.
Traynor said clients often book with Manifesto weeks in advance, but because B.C. Hydro wouldn’t confirm exactly when and for how long the salon would be without power, she was forced to break their appointments.
“B.C. Hydro is being incredibly inconsiderate in not giving people adequate amount of notice and then not providing an alternate power source or any sort of support so that we can do business,” she said. “The cumulative losses are incredible.”
Wesley McMillan, a lawyer representing Traynor’s salon and a dozen more businesses affected by the interruption, couriered a letter to B.C. Hydro’s legal department Tuesday asking for confirmation that it will either “(a) abandon the planned dis- ruption of power or (b) provide our clients a suitable alternate power source during the disruption.”
In the letter, McMillan wrote that the interruption constitutes an “actionable nuisance” that could cost his clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and wages, spoiled goods and other damages.
Brij Chopra, manager of Sweet Cherubim Organic & Natural Foods, said he planned to keep the business’ restaurant, bakery and grocery store open today.
But, in order to do this, Chopra had to line up a reserve generator and arrange for extra staff to be on hand in case they were needed to relocate perishable foods or calculate transactions manually, he said.
Chopra said B.C. Hydro should have given businesses three weeks’ notice about the interruption, and questioned why the power authority didn’t schedule the work after business hours or spread it over shorter periods of time.
Christian Betancor-Leon, owner of Bikram Yoga Commercial Drive, was in the process of arranging to split the cost of the generator with Sweet Cherubim.
He said that depending on the length of the interruption and whether the generator will provide sufficient power to the studio’s heating panels, he may end up having to cancel 10 classes and turn away 120 clients.
Heer said B.C. Hydro delivered the notices a week before the interruption to give businesses time to prepare.
“At that time we asked them to prepare for the worst-case scenario — a 10-hour outage,” Heer said. “However, we have been working through this since last week and have been able to reduce the outage window to about three hours (about 10 customers within the immediate vicinity of the poles will experience a six-hour outage).”
Heer said the repairs couldn’t be performed at night due to elevated safety risks.