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Power outage puzzles hydro employees

It’s a mystery.

That’s how BC Hydro community relations co-ordinator Gene Bryant describes a power outage that occurred at 2:31 p.m. Thursday, March 10.

Bryant says a circuit breaker at the Salmon Arm sub-station went off, indicating there was a fault somewhere in the line.

Hydro employees had to physically drive the entire route to  find what caused the break.

What they found in front of Rona on the Trans-Canada Highway was that two of three wires spanning two power poles were completely wrapped around each other.

“That’s the head-scratcher for us,” Bryant said Friday. “Usually there’s a reason - wind, a motor vehicle accident or a fallen tree, but there was seemingly no cause, no fallen tree, no accident, no wind.”

Hydro workers were able to sort the problem out in a timely fashion but then had to continue checking the rest of the route and the circuit breaker before re-energizing the system.

Power was restored to the last customer at 6:10 p.m.