News Editorial Letters In Other Words Chinese New Year Sports Classified
3 10 11 13 17 37 41
Kung Hay Fat Choy
On safari
Check out our Chinese New Year section for predictions by Sherman Tai, traditions, recipes and your horoscope in celebration of the Year of the Dragon.
A travel writer gets ringside seats on the Serengeti in Kenya to witness the pecking order among nature’s most maginificent beasts.
35
17
F
R
I
D
A
02082955
Index
Y
,
J
A
N
U
A
R
2 0 ,
Y
FREE HOME EVALUATION • Free list of Available & Sold homes • Full details w/photos
CALL NOW!
604-649-0108 www.tonyling.com
2 0 1 2
Follow us on
YOUR
SOURCE
FOR
LOCAL
SPORTS
,
NEWS
,
W E AT H E R
AND
E N T E RTA I N M E N T
!
WWW
.RICHMOND-NEWS.COM HYDRO
Enter the Dragon
Arctic air blast blows out power Demand spike blamed for mass outage which affected almost half the city BY ALAN CAMPBELL
acampbell@richmond-news.com
A spike in demand during the Arctic conditions contributed to the massive power outage which plunged almost half of Richmond into darkness and deep freeze Wednesday. Just after 5 p.m., BC Hydro customers in the southern half of the city began losing power after a transformer blew at the Steveston substation. Within five minutes, more than 36,000 homes and businesses were without light or heat from Highway 99 to the west dyke and from Blundell Road to the south arm of the Fraser River. Ironically, at — David the time of the outage, a hydro crew was working at the substation on a fault which caused a similar outage last month. And because one of two transformers at the station was shut down so the repair could be carried out, the one remaining transformer alone couldn’t handle the higher than usual demand from customers battling to beat the -8 C temperature. “Substation work was under-
way to repair equipment involved in a short outage to the same number of customers in the same area on Dec. 30,” David Lebeter, BC Hydro’s vice president of field operations and safety, said in an e-mail to the News Thursday. “Last night’s outage was triggered by a built-in system protection which activated due to weather-related high demand on station equipment while the repairs were underway.” By 6:10 p.m. the same evening, BC Hydro said power had been restored to 24,000 homes and by 9 p.m., all affected customers had their power back on. “Restoring power is a Lebeter top priority at BC Hydro,” Lebeter added. “We worked quickly through the course of the evening … to restore power to about 36,000 customers affected …” Bearing in mind there has been two major outages within a few weeks of each other, Lebeter said all repairs at the substation will be completed by next week and that they “anticipate no further problems.”
CHUNG CHOW/RICHMOND NEWS
Samantha Lee, 3, tries her best to breath fire like her little dragon friend while visiting Aberdeen Centre. The shopping centre will be celebrating Chinese New Year, the year of the dragon, all weekend with a New Year countdown from 10:30 p.m. Sunday. See the News’ special section on page 17.
$
$ $
$
$
$
Beer, Wine, Pop, Juice, Water
It's worth
RICHMOND BOTTLE DEPOT
it.
=$
8171 Westminster Hwy. (at Buswell, one block east of No. 3 Rd.) Walkway access also from Save-On Foods parking lot
Mon-Sat 8:45-6:30 Sun 10-5 (604) 780-4959
09143553
“Last night’s outage was triggered by a built-in system protection which activated due to weather-related high demand...”