The voluntary plunge into darkness that is "Earth Hour" came and went with little impact in our neighbourhood last night. But several hours later, a wide swath of our region suffered a power blackout, which most of us learned only this morning when our alarm clocks didn't go off.
All of which got someone close to me to wonder if the blackout wasn't actually an intentional power stoppage orchestrated by an overeager, environmentally-conscious minion at B.C. Hydro. Surely not! Surely, not even the most zealous Defender of the Planet would do such a thing.
Curious, though, as to the official reason for the blackout, I scooted over the Hydro's website, only to learn that the Crown corporation had attributed the two-hour power interruption (which affected more than 8,000 users) to that catch-all reason of "other."
Nevertheless, there's probably an entirely reasonable technical explanation for the power failure. I'll send an email to the corp. now, and will let you know what the answer is.
UPDATE (March 30): I've just received a phone call from BC Hydro. The customer-service rep says the widespread outage was caused by a "blown cable" at the corp's substation in the area. No connection to Earth Hour, he assures me.
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