Along with 13,000 residents in the Columbia Valley, Golden was subject to a massive power outage on July 5.

The black-out that affected residents from Invermere to Golden, lasted nearly eight hours with the B.C. Transmission Corporation (BCTC) reporting the outages starting at 2 p.m.

The Golden Star spoke with BCTC's Communications Manager, Mike Witherly, on July 6 regarding the sudden outage.

"There was an equipment failure near an Invermere substation that affected the 13,000 customers in the valley," said Witherly.

He went on to explain that crews, who were quickly called out upon receiving information of the outage, surveyed the line by helicopter and land and located a burnt switch in the substation.

"As soon as it was located, crews worked to re-route power as soon as possible. Power was turned back on in stages in order to balance the load," he explained.

Witherly said that power line technicians were brought in from Golden, Cranbrook and Invermere to help with the re-routing of power. Crews did temporary repairs and Witherly said that permanent repairs are expected to be completed by the end of the week.

There will be a planned one-hour power outage on the evening of June 7 while repairs are being made.

"There is a planned power outage from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. to facilitate permanent repairs," explained Diane Tammen, East Kootenay Community Relations Manager with BC Hydro.

Witherly said that the cause of the burned out switch is being attributed to faulty equipment.

Some residents may have experienced another outage in the early morning hours of July 6 and Witherly explained that outage was due to a lightning strike on a line going into Invermere.

Witherly said that he hoped to reiterate the importance of the proposed Columbia Valley Transmission Project that will bring a second power line into Golden.

"The advantages to having an additional line are that in these situations we will have yet another route to get power into Golden. The reliability will be much better."

Residents of Golden also experienced a failure in their Telus service during the outage. The Golden Star contacted Telus on July 6 to address that issue.

Chris Gerritsen, spokesperson for Telus, explained that because of the major power outage in the area, and the amount of time it lasted, Telus's backup batteries began to fail.

"At about 9 p.m. our backup batteries started to fail, so phone service in the area was affected for about an hour. According to our network monitoring, 3500 customers were affected."

Gerritsen said that Telus contacted the RCMP as soon as service went down.

"What happens then is that the RCMP are able to institute their own emergency plans in their municipalities. Every town has a different emergency plan," he said, adding that once Telus makes the call it is up to the local RCMP to instate whatever contingency plan they have in place.

Gerritsen said that Telus is as susceptible to power outages as much as anyone else.

"Our back-up batteries do last a number of hours and we do our best to keep the network up and running. The amount of time a back-up battery lasts depends on the drainage to the system."

When queried as to whether Telus had considered backing up its back-ups in our highly susceptible blackout area, Gerritsen said that the company is always learning and trying to do things better for their customers.

"We understand that phone service is essential and that is why we have back-ups in place. The network is monitored very closely."

In a massive outage, Gerritsen explained that usually phones that are plugged in to a wall jack will work and that it is rare for the back-up services to be completely depleted.

"What you can do at home, to prepare for this kind of thing, is have a back-up hardwire phone in case of emergency. If a phone is plugged into a wall it does not need battery power, but a cordless phone does."