Stormy weather left thousands without power early this week.
(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)
September 21, 2013 - 11:13 AM
KAMLOOPS – It was a busy week in the Kamloops area with storms knocking out power to thousands of residents, the stabbing of two men near McDonald Park and an E. coli outbreak attributed to Gort's Gouda in Salmon Arm.
The sport of longboarding is quickly growing in popularity in Kamloops and it's easy to see why. Boarders shared their passion for the intense sport with a smiles on their faces and scrapes on their knees as they enjoyed a jam session.
Hundreds of kids descend on Riverside Park where the Children's Art Festival offered more than two dozen stations and activities. The stations allowed kids to try their hands at something new and create to their hearts content or simply watch others as they crafted, danced and acted.
At Shuswap Lake a Sorrento man drowned after falling out of his boat. The man was not wearing a lifejacket and was only 30 metres from shore when the incident happened.
Sunday night the weather began to change from the blistering, record setting heat to thunder and wind storms that saw power knocked out to thousands of residents. More than 10,000 residents from Kamloops to north of Blue River lost power after a transmission tower was hit by lightning, Several thousand more were affected by outages caused by tree branches falling on wires. Monday afternoon a wind storm knocked out power to a couple thousand more residents while residents of Sun Rivers suffered through a couple days of power outages as Corix Utilities tried to figure out how to correct the problem.
The quick change in temperature brought some relief to B.C. Wildfire as the risk of fires was reduced to between low and really low across the region. The cooler temperatures also made it easier for the Gleaning Abundance Project to get out and collect unwanted produce from fruit trees and gardens to distribute to the food bank and soup kitchens.
Two stabbings near McDonald Park sent two men to hospital for treatment on Tuesday night and had RCMP searching for the suspect, who police say was likely known to the men.
Nearly a dozen people have been linked to an E. Coli breakout in Gort's Gouda cheeses. One person died after becoming infected this summer and at least one tourist regrets ever stopping at the farm for some fresh cheese.
This week also saw local governments gather for the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Vancouver to network, share and decide on what resolutions to lobby for or against. Half the way through the convention, B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix announced he would step aside. He made the announcement in his riding of Vancouver-Kingsway but addressed delegates at the convention the next day.
To contact a reporter for this story, email jstahn@infotelnews.ca, call (250)819-3723 or tweet @JennStahn.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013