Prince George, B.C. – A lightning strike this afternoon is believed to be responsible for a massive power outage stretching from Vanderhoof to Prince Rupert.

Dave Mosure with the community relations department at BC Hydro says they first received the report at around 3:40 this afternoon.

“At this point we did have what we suspect to be a lightning strike on the 500 kilovolt transmission lines that head west from Prince George and at one point we had some sort of an event that took the power out from Vanderhoof to Prince Rupert,” he says.

“Our control system went through its automated restoration attempts and we have had a successful restoration at this point. So it looks like we may have gotten off light.”

The outage affected approximately 50,000 customers and lasted about 20 minutes.