Search continues for orphaned bear cubs

The mother bear was hit by a vehicle on the Thursday before last, near West Coast Road, leaving a trio of cubs orphaned. Sooke wildlife organization Wild Wise said this week that the cubs were sheltering high up in a tree beside the water, in a hard-to-access area on private property, making their attempts to retrieve them unsuccessful. 

But the group later updated that the cubs had climbed down, and revealed that the tree had been in a steep area of the Sooke Basin. Initially the location was kept vague, to avoid anybody going there to try to see the bears. Wild Wise says it was a place to which the mother had often brought the cubs—a safe place for bears to stay, but not a safe place for bears to be tranquilizer-darted and fall.

The BC Conservation Service was concerned about the cubs in Tuesday's windstorm, and is looking for the public's help in finding them again. Wild Wise is asking only for real-time sightings to be reported to the RAPP line (1-877-952-7277), or to be contacted directly on Facebook. As of Saturday, the cubs had been seen near Townsend and Waddams.

If the cubs can be captured, conservation officers would take them to the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre.

Wild Wise has also blamed the mother bear's death partly on locals not securing garbage and other attractants, saying that those bring bears closer to areas full of people—and cars.

Conservation officers say that this is not the same family of bears that has been frequently spotted in Colwood this fall. Read more at The Westshore.

A handful of outages remain on Gabriola near Nanaimo and up-Island, per the BC Hydro map.

In some areas, crews were still tackling downed trees and other outage-causing damage from Tuesday when new warnings went out on Friday for another (but somewhat weaker) windstorm. 

Some 150,000 across the Island (300,000 in BC as a whole) lost power from Tuesday's storm, but the bulk had it restored within a day. But even on Friday morning there remained 10,000+ BC Hydro customers provincewide who were still without power. Those in remote parts of the Island were advised that they may not get full power restored until Saturday night.

On Gabriola Island, where thousands spent days without power, a few customers were still without it as of Sat. night. The community faces several outages per year, and this week locals were relying on generators, wood stoves, and stockpiles of food.

Outage lasted until weekend for some East Sooke residents 

Crews have been “bustin’ it day and night,” locals told CHEK, working around the clock and doing heavy overtime to address felled trees and tangled wires from Tuesday's storm. Residents, for their part, kept the crews fed.

This week the Westshore looked at how Sooke & beyond have been particularly affected—and often cut off from Greater Victoria—by recent major storms.

Video: Octopus vs. storm

It wasn't only on land that the windstorm was felt. At Folger Pinnacle near Bamfield, video from UVic-based Ocean Networks Canada shows an octopus holding desperately on to an undersea rock.

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