Climate Change Causing Storms To Grow: Report

Nov 16, 2018 | 1:25 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – According to a new BC Hydro report, storm and extreme weather events are becoming worse and more frequent as a result of climate change. 

In the past five years, the severe storm numbers have tripled and are leading to more power outages and damage to BC Hydro’s electrical systems. The number of customers reporting outages due to major storms has jumped by about 265 percent from 2013 to 2017.

“This is hitting communities all across Canada. You see it as well in the wildfires, you see it in flooding that we’ve gotten and that change is incredibly expensive. It’s something that the property tax system simply isn’t designed to carry when we have to do that much replacement and that much work,” says Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Second Vice-President Garth Frizzell. 

Specifically in the north there has been a few extreme weather events including wildfires in 2016, a snowstorm in 2015 and a windstorm in 2014. The 2016 wildfire alone caused more than 64 hundred customers in the Peace Region to lose power. The extreme weather and trees account for 60 percent of all outages in BC. 

Although the severity of storms is increasing, the time customers are without power has remained relatively the same. The average amount of time a customer would be without power over a year is three hours.

“The changes in the weather don’t just change on how we’re feeling, this is having great impact on the things we’ve built and for BC Hydro they announced that in the last five year that the number of weather-related events tripled. Well there is just one crown corporation, this is doing the same thing for 2 thousand municipalities all across Canada and that’s hitting us in our old aged infrastructure, our roads, our water, our sewer, it’s expensive and we’re going to have to work together if we’re going to solve this,” adds Frizzell. 

BC Hydro is recommending British Columbians prepare for the storms and power outages by having a well-stocked emergency kit on-hand. 

 

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