Wildfire safety practices
Your safety is our priority. During wildfire season, we take extra precautions to protect both your community and the electricity system to help reduce the potential risks of wildfires. Our commitment goes beyond business—it’s personal. With hundreds of employees across B.C., including in the Southern Interior, we’re not just serving these communities—we are part of them. We live, work and raise our families here, and we care deeply about the safety and well-being of our neighbours.
Reasons for safety-related outages
There are three reasons electricity customers may experience a longer than usual power outage during periods of high wildfire risk. These measures are designed to safeguard you, and we’re committed to keeping you informed every step of the way and restoring power safely and as quickly as possible. Just like being prepared during storm season, it’s important to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours. That means having a plan, supplies and a way to stay informed.
1. Power line safety settings
When wildfire risk is high, we turn on enhanced safety settings that increase the sensitivity of our equipment to help reduce the risk of wildfires. For example, debris contacting a line during a windstorm could trigger an outage, and the power would remain off until we can manually inspect the line to be sure it’s safe before restoring power.
2. Emergency wildfire outage
During active wildfires, FortisBC may shut off power in consultation with local fire authorities, to support firefighting efforts. We may also apply fire retardant and fire blankets to protect our equipment. Once the fire has passed, our crews will inspect our equipment for damage, make repairs and restore your power.
3. Public Safety Power Shutoff
The Public Safety Power Shutoff is an additional measure to help reduce the risk of wildfires. During a PSPS event we would temporarily shut off power in your community during extreme weather conditions to reduce potential ignition sources. We understand that you and your community rely on electricity, and any power outage can be a concern. These safety shutoffs are a tool of last resort, and the decision to implement a PSPS event is not taken lightly. Our decisions are guided by careful monitoring of weather forecasts and real-time updates from our crews in the field.
Find current and future outages on our outage map. Learn more about wildfire safety practices and Public Safety Power Shutoffs with our top questions and answers.
Join us for an open house
We’ve received important feedback and questions from communities, local governments and customers about our PSPS policy. In addition, we have also received a direction from the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) to pause our implementation to allow for a review our PSPS policy. As a result, we’ve made the decision to postpone our upcoming open houses to early June. Read our media bulletin.