25th March, 1977
Mr. R. A. Freeman Page 2

However for technical reasons it is not possible to fuse the "backbone"
which is protected instead by a heavy circuit breaker at the substation.
Therefore when a tree falls on any part of the "backbone", or a vehicle
knocks over a pole within it, the whole feeder circuit kicks out at the
substation and cuts supply to the whole area North of Prairie Avenue

until such time as our Patrolman can locate the fault and carry out switch-
ing to isolate the damaged portion.

The outage on 7th March was a good example of the problem. The
gale that evening took out several feeders in Coquitlam (due also to large
trees falling across our lines from private property). All available men
were dispatched to the first few locations. Soon afterwards at about 4:20
p.m. a very large cottonwood crashed right across Cedar Drive smashing the
line, taking out the feeder circuit right back to the substation, and
blocking the entire roadway. In the manner explained before, this one tree
put the entire area North of Prairie out of power. As soon as we had a
erew clear of the previous problems they were dispatched to the Northside
to locate the trouble and start repairs. After the crew located the tree
on Cedar Drive our Patrolman, as soon as he was available, carried out some
switching to isolate the damaged portion of line from the rest of the
circuit. It was then possible to switch the feeder back in at the substation
ty remote control to restore all healthy sections of the feeder at about
5:20 p.m. Thus the outage to most of the area was limited to one hour. It
then took a crew until almost 9:00 p.m. to remove the tree from the line and
the roadway, and repair the broken line so that power could be restored on
Cedar Drive and Oliver.

The above example is typical of the major outages we encounter
in the Northside and the measures taken by our crews to keep outage times
to a minimum. It would be excessively costly to remove most of the "danger
trees" and this would certainly be resisted in many cases by property
owners. However, since such trees do obstruct the road, and may also damage
public property in addition to damaging Hydro and B. C. Tel Plant, we would
be glad to meet with the City's Staff to discuss sharing costs to remove or
top the most threatening of these problem trees. Please contact me if you
wish to discuss this idea further.

Yours truly,

fe Coon

“J. H. Coupe
Coquitlam District Manager