sunnykerr

Lights still out in downtown Vancouver

VANCOUVER - Late Monday afternoon, a lone BC Hydro employee wearing a face mask and hard hat was lowered underground into an area filled earlier in the day with smoke so toxic, nearby buildings were evacuated.

It was the crew member's job to inspect damage caused by a morning fire that knocked out power to skyscrapers and buildings throughout Vancouver's downtown core, causing traffic nightmares in the city and Internet woes all over North America.

The dramatic lowering took place seven hours after the fire began in an underground vault near a Hydro substation. A 12-member confined-space rescue team was on hand in case the crew member experienced any problems while underground.

He emerged safely a few minutes later. Still, crews weren't able to repair the damage.

Late Monday night, Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning said the force was braced for potential overnight threats to "people and property" in the darkened city.

"We have extra officers assigned to the affected area in case anyone gets the wrong idea," Fanning said.

Meanwhile, BC Hydro said about 2,200 customers were without power overnight in downtown Vancouver. Many affected by the outage were large employers.

Crews were having difficulty accessing the manhole where the fire started because of smoke and heat. BC Hydro said the damage will likely be "significant" and predicted power wouldn't be restored until this morning.

Adding to the power outage woes, Internet services for many companies was blacked out when one of seven backup generators at Harbour Centre, a major telecommunications and Internet hub in Vancouver, conked out.

Douglas Hume, vice-president and general manager of the Harbour Centre complex, said two major tenants were affected.

"Unfortunately, we're a big network of customers and clients," Hume said. "I think the repercussions were felt all over North America."

Several hundred Internet servers lost power, said Martin Robson of Robson Communications Inc. That means many corporate websites - including BC Ferries' - were down.

"We have over 200 servers located at Harbour Centre and they're off-line as a result of the power outage," Robson said. "A huge number of companies (are) off-line."

Many of those organizations affected weren't even in Vancouver.

Vancouver police Const. Don Duncan said police received a 911 call Monday morning reporting an explosion downtown.

"It came in as an explosion. I guess it popped and blew the manhole cover off," said Duncan.

Gary Rodford, BC Hydro's senior vice-president of operations, said Hydro has backup power systems for some parts of the downtown core, but not all.

"In some ways, this highlights the need for Hydro to reinvest in its infrastructure," said Danard, noting Hydro recently won approval for a rate increase to do just that.

I learned about this because I'm slightly addicted to a website that lists release dates for TV shows on DVD. And it wasn't functionning yesterday. I'm pretty shocked. The article doesn't mention directly the cause of the explosion, though it's implied pretty clearly that poor infrastructure is to blame.

It does cast in sharp contrast the need to overhaul the infrastructure in older cities. In Montreal, our entire road system needs to be done over as overpasses have been compromised by age and changes in traffic and vehicles.

I am grateful that no one seems to have been injured.

vc318

Thank goodness that there hasn't been any casualties as well. I'm sure this will take a while to clean up.

sunnykerr

At the risk of sounding really stupid when I say this...

It was kinda of a shock because, when you hear about explosions on the news these days, they're generally related to suicide bombers and terrorism, you know? So, one, to have an event that is so connected with terrorism in my mind happen in Vancouver? That was scary in an of itself.

But, two, it also brought to mind just how much my own psyche has changed since September 11. Because terrorism would have been the LAST thing I would have thought about a short (and yet oh so long) seven years ago.