Three BC Hydro workers were injured and downtown Vancouver traffic was snarled because of an underground blast yesterday morning.
BC Hydro spokeswoman Susan Danard said the workers were in an underground vault performing "routine maintenance on a switch" when the incident happened around 11:45 a.m. beneath the intersection of Seymour and West Georgia streets.
Danard said two workers suffered burns and the other had smoke inhalation.
"It wasn't an active piece of equipment, so there were no power outages associated with it," Danard said.
A cause was not immediately apparent, Danard said. BC Hydro and WorkSafeBC are investigating.
An overheated, three-year-old connector in a 500-block Richards Street manhole was blamed for a July 14, 2008 explosion and power outage that crippled part of downtown for three days. A third transformer was installed during a year-long project at nearby Cathedral Square.
