The weekend’s windstorm wiped out electricity for nearly 50,000 customers in Burnaby, leaving the Chevron refinery down and wildlife rehabilitators scrambling to care for injured animals.
Chevron lost power to its Burnaby refinery on Saturday, and it will take days before the site is up and running again. Company spokesperson Dave Schick says the downtime won’t affect local fuel supply.
“We’re not operating at the moment,” he told the NOW. “We won’t be producing at normal rates for several days.”
The refinery produces 55,000 barrels of oil per day and mostly supplies the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, but Schick said there is product already in storage, so supply won’t be impacted. More than one-third of the Lower Mainland’s fuel supply comes from the Burnaby Chevron refinery.
“We don’t foresee any supply issues. The other thing is there are exchange agreements we have with other suppliers for when something unexpected happens, so that’s a possibility as well,” he said.
Schick said the refinery has backup power for critical pieces of equipment but not enough electricity to run the entire operation.
“We need a power plant in order to keep it running,” he said.
Schick said things were shut down safely, and there was no threat to human health, but bringing the refinery back on will take a number of days.
“It’s a sequential thing. You don’t just turn it on,” he said. “We bring it back up again piece by piece, in a certain order, and each piece needs to be assessed as you go.”
Schick has been receiving calls from members of the U.S. financial press.
“Any disruption to refinery production is of interest to people in the energy business,” he said.
Meanwhile, across town, the Wildlife Rescue Association was without power at its Burnaby Lake rehabilitation centre from Saturday around noon until Monday afternoon, and some animals were put down.
“One of our staff members called B.C. Hydro to beg them to get power back up,” said spokesperson Yolanda Brooks.
Staff and volunteers were scrambling to treat the animals with no light or heat. Trees also fell on three cars in the staff parking lot. Staff used flashlights and headlamps while feeding and treating the animals the best they could, but some animals had to be euthanized. Other critters in critical condition were sent to other animal clinics with power. Of particular concern are the eight freezers full of thousands of dollars of animal food.
According to B.C. Hydro, there were 530,000 customers across B.C. that lost power during the windstorm, and 48,333 were in Burnaby alone. B.C. Hydro had more than 400 workers on the job, some called in from other areas of B.C. The majority of Burnaby outages were restored by Sunday, but on Tuesday, there were still 1,197 customers with no electricity. That was fixed by 9 a.m., and there are no remaining local outages.
