Wind, tree take down hydro lines in west London
More than 200 customers are without power in west London after the wind took out some power lines and a tree took out some others.
According to London fire, The tree came down when someone was cutting it.
Eastbound traffic on Riverside is blocked between Wilson Avenue an Belton Street.
Fire crews have cleared the scene but hydro crews are still there working to restore power.
london - outage map - july 2025
A map shows the area were customers have no power due to downed power lines. July 17, 2025. (Source: London Hydro)
trees down - london power - july 2025
London Hydro crews are working to restore power after a tree came down while being cut and wind blew down some power lines. July 17, 2025. (Source: London fire)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
37 minutes ago
- CBC
Jasper bolsters fire resiliency standards after devastating 2024 wildfire
The Municipality of Jasper and Parks Canada are taking firmer measures to protect the park from wildfires, after a massive wildfire destroyed 30 per cent of the townsite in July 2024. The measures will ensure that homes are built with non-combustible roofs and siding instead of highly flammable material like cedar shingles, which had been a popular choice for the mountain town. The municipality adopted new urban design standards under its land use and planning department based on guidelines under the national FireSmart program. The program, developed in the early 2000s, outlines how people can make their properties more resilient to fire, such as removing debris and dry vegetation and building with non-flammable materials. Mathew Conte, Jasper's fire chief, said cedar shingles, pine needles and pine cones are prime fuel for ember showers that dropped hot embers and bits of fire over Jasper last summer. "Where we found we were severely impacted by that, were a lot of the homes that still had cedar shake roofs," Conte said during a news availability on Monday. "Crews spent most of their evening actioning those fires all night long," Conte recounted. "Unfortunately, by the time they put out one and moved on to the next one, that ember shower just reignited the structure in behind us." Conte said the fire also latched on to wooden decks and juniper bushes at properties that didn't implement FireSmart guidelines. The municipality and Parks Canada are encouraging people who still have cedar roofs to replace them with non-combustible materials, like tin and asphalt. Conte said the fire department has hired a captain of prevention to help educate residents about FireSmart guidelines, a program that's been around since the early 2000s. With the help of the new captain, the fire department has done 30 advanced home assessments in the past two months, he noted. "I think they're taking it a lot more seriously," Conte said. "We have a lot of residents that have actually reached out to us." Jasper has also purchased residential sprinkler kits, which people can buy at cost from the fire department. Zone of protection Parks Canada has expanded its risk reduction program that started more than two decades ago, said David Argument, the resource conservation manager for Jasper National Park. Crews cut down highly flammable evergreens like the lodgepole pine in sections of forest around the townsite to make it harder for fire to spread through high tree canopy, he said. So far, they've carved out 900 hectares of land to the north and west of the townsite. Thinning the forest makes it harder for fire to spread through a high canopy of trees, he said. On Pyramid Bench, a hill north of the townsite, Argument showed media a new 60-hectare block of land they cleared over the winter, "We're trying to produce a zone of fire protection or, or vegetation treatment all the way around the perimeter of the community." You can walk from the furthest southern end of town at Stone Mountain for about 2.5 km before you get to the end of the zone, Argument said. "We're knitting together a long-term plan that we believe will be able to maintain the long term," Argument said. "We can't just cut it and walk away. It has to be something we can maintain long term." It costs $15,000 a hectare to cut down and remove the wood. "So it is costly work to get this wood off the landscape," Argument said. Conte said last summer's hot and dry conditions were unprecedented, and they were taken by surprise how quickly the fire hit the town — 46 hours from the time the fire ignited in the south valley. "From the time that fire was about five kilometres out, it took about 30 minutes to reach the town. So very little time." "We've always planned and prepared for a forest fire. And I think any community that lives in a forested area, it's always a matter of when it'll happen, not if," Conte said.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Here's how wildfires could impact Saskatchewan's trapping industry
Don Gordon stands in front of his trapping cabin that is surrounded by boreal forest. Don Gordon has been trapping furs in Saskatchewan's boreal forest for decades. He says the lifelong passion has allowed him to experience nature at its best and its worst. He experienced some of the worst this spring. Wildfire threatened his cabin and designated trapping territory, known as a trapline. He estimated that flames were within nine metres of his front step. In other areas, he doesn't understand how the fire stopped inches before engulfing his shed. 'I came here expecting a pile of tin,' he said, adding it was emotional to see his cabin still standing. Dozens of traplines, along with several cabins, have been wiped out by wildfire this season. Gordon knows of at least two cabins that burned down in his fur block, the area of land where licensed trappers are allowed to harvest fur, but he says trappers won't know the full extent of the damage until they can get back into the area. 'There are some traplines that are completely devastated,' he said. 'There's going to be a lot of individuals that don't even go back this winter.' Even if cabins are still standing, Gordon said trails have been burned, making it difficult to travel through fur blocks. Clearing paths and cutting down burned trees will be a priority before any traps are laid this fall. It will also take months to see what species of animals come back to the area. 'The land species, if it's totally burnt, there won't be anything this winter to trap,' he said, adding it could take years for species to move back. The Prince Albert Grand Council is calling on the Saskatchewan government to expand its disaster assistance program to make trapline cabins eligible for wildfire relief funding. 'Trapping is what built Canada,' said PAGC Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte. 'There has to be support in this industry.' Provincial assistance is available for certain uninsurable losses following natural disasters. The Provincial Disaster Assistance Program (PDAP) is not intended to compete with private insurers or to provide full compensation to those who incur a substantial loss or damage to property, according to the government's website. 'Though not a replacement for private insurance, PDAP may help cover essential uninsurable losses such as cleanup, repairs, and temporary relocation. Trapper cabins are insurable and as such, are not eligible for assistance,' the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) said in a written statement. Very few trapline cabins are insured due to the remote locations and lack of affordable coverage, according to Hardlotte. He, along with other First Nations Chiefs in Northern Saskatchewan, now worry some trappers won't be able to recover, and livelihoods and culture will be lost. 'It's not only trapping. It's about being well out on the land, eating the right foods and being active on the land and being healthy,' the Grand Chief said. Gordon agrees the wildfires could put some trappers out of business. But he's optimistic that passion, and the strength of the industry, will keep the practice alive. 'As long as there's a product being provided and a market to buy the product, trapping will remain,' Gordon said.
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
It's not your imagination: Winnipeg summers are smokier than they used to be
Social Sharing Feel like the past few Winnipeg summers have been smokier than usual? Turns out, there's data to back that up. The last several summers have been some of Canada's smokiest on record, as wildfires burn bigger, hotter and earlier in the season than had been normal in previous decades. Amid the worst wildfire season in Manitoba in three decades, at this pace Winnipeg could break its own nearly 65-year-old smoke record this year. "We do see this increasing, and some of it can be attributed to climate change, or drought, or the heat," said Céline Audette, manager for health and air quality forecast services at Environment and Climate Change Canada. The agency has been tracking smoke in the city's air since 1953. And while the smokiest summer on record came way back in 1961, that was a rare occurrence for the era that coincided with a historic summer drought and more than one million hectares of forest burned. Lately, smoky summers have been a more frequent occurrence. "With increasing temperatures and increasing heat in many areas of the country, we will have also an increasing number of forest fires," Audette said. WATCH | Winnipeg summers getting smokier, data suggests: Winnipeg summers getting smokier, data suggests 1 hour ago Historical data from Environment and Climate Change Canada suggests Winnipeg summers have been getting smokier in recent years due to warmer summers, more wildfires and other factors related to climate change. And with an increasing number of forest fires, there will also be an increasing number of what are known as "smoke hours," she said. It's a measure Environment and Climate Change Canada defines as a period when visibility drops to 9.7 kilometres (six statute miles) or less due to smoke, as measured hourly by some of its weather-monitoring stations — including one near the Winnipeg airport. For decades, 1961 stood out as the only year that saw more than 100 total smoke hours in Winnipeg during wildfire season (May to September). More recently, however, that amount of smoke has become the norm. Four of the past five years have seen 100 smoke hours or more. The chart below shows total smoke hours each year, including so far in 2025. The data in this chart is updated daily, so you can check back throughout the summer to see how it compares to past years — and whether Winnipeg breaks the record set in 1961. As of mid-July, 2025 was already the third-smokiest season on record. A disadvantage of the "smoke hour" measure — as compared to more nuanced air-quality index scores or detailed fine-particulate matter readings — is that it doesn't tell you exactly how smoky it is. But the advantage is that Environment and Climate Change Canada has been tracking "smoke hours" this way for the better part of a century, allowing us to compare our current smoky skies to those of Winnipeggers long in the past. Another advantage: it tracks naturally with our intuitive experience. Was it smoky just in the morning, or all day? Was it smoky just for a day or two? All week? The calendar-style chart below depicts smoke this wildfire season. Each dot in the chart represents a day, and the colour of each dot depicts how many smoke hours there were that day. Darker dots mean more smoke hours — and in July, the two darkest are July 11 and 12, when advisories were issued as thousands attended Winnipeg Folk Festival. Wildfire smoke in past seasons Using this same approach, we can peer back into past wildfire seasons, at a glance. The final chart below depicts each season as a horizontal band. Each day is a coloured line on that band. The colour of each bar represents the number of smoke hours that day. It makes for a tall chart. But as you scroll down, you can quickly see how Winnipeg's air looked in recent years compared to the 2010s, 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s and 1950s. Different kinds of smoke It's important to note that not all of the smoke picked up in this measure since 1953 necessarily comes from wildfires. Smoke from other sources, such as stubble burning on nearby agricultural land, would also register in the data. The practice was more common in the past, before the Manitoba Government began regulating it in 1993, after a particularly brutal blanket of smoke enveloped parts of the province in October 1992. Effects of smoke Dr. Anna Gunz said smoke may affect health in the long term in similar ways to exposure to other forms of air pollution, which can impact heart, lung and brain health. "Some of this obviously we don't know yet from wildfires, but ... it seems like exposure to wildfire smoke can affect prenatal outcomes, including low birth weight and potentially prematurity," Gunz, an environmental health pediatrician and professor at Western University, recently told Information Radio host Marcy Markusa. "We know there are long-term health consequences that these infants are now at risk of." The Weather CAN app is one place you can check for air quality index scores before heading outside. Source of smoke The following map also provides a visual sense of where any smoke currently in the sky is originating. Environment Canada tracks one of the main pollutants in wildfire smoke, known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5, and how it's circulating in the air. Below, you can see a map showing the latest smoke plumes circulating over North America. You can scroll around and zoom in on the map to take a closer look at Winnipeg or any specific area.
