A woman who died after a tree fell on her house in Port Moody during a severe windstorm that whipped across B.C.’s south coast on Thursday morning has been identified as the executive-director of Port Coquitlam-based New View Society, which provides help to people with mental illness.

In a statement released late Thursday, society spokeswoman Susanna Walden described Jill Calder, who had been with the society for 16 years, as a woman who created “a caring and warm atmosphere which allowed her staff to deliver the best possible support services to the members they serve. She will be dearly missed by everyone who had the privilege of knowing her.”

Calder was sleeping at around 6:30 a.m., when the tree came crashing through the roof of her house on Alpine Place, located in the Mountain Meadows neighbourhood on Heritage Mountain.

Ken Ellis, who lives three houses away from the Calder home, said he was devastated by the loss.

“She’s my wife’s best friend. We’ve known them for 20 years. Jill lived to serve people.”

BC Coroners Service spokeswoman Barb McLintock confirmed the coroner is investigating, but did not release any details about what happened.

Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay said emergency crews tried to extract Calder, but were hampered by how much damage the tree had done to the house. It is unknown whether there was anyone else in the house at the time.

“It’s just horrible ... this happened in a really tight-knit neighbourhood. This is going to be tough on the entire community,” he said, adding that the city will do whatever it can to help the family deal with the tragedy.

The storm, which saw winds of up to 100 km/h in some areas, caused flooding, power outages to tens of thousands of homes, school closures, and travel disruptions. Clay noted that sirens were heard throughout the night, and there were trees and branches on roads around the city.

At one point early Thursday, nearly 120,000 BC Hydro customers were without power across Metro Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast. Thousands more on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands were experiencing power disruptions.

A number of trees fell on power lines, and meteorologists warned residents to be careful of flying branches. At least 11 schools in Surrey, four in Abbotsford and four in Mission were closed because of the outages.

Delta activated an emergency operations centre because of localized flooding in the Boundary Bay/Beach Grove areas, as well as the downtown Ladner waterfront.

Delta Mayor Lois Jackson said crews had been out since 5 a.m., scrambling to sandbag and pump water out of the flooded streets. She said approximately nine houses were affected by overflowing dikes, and engineers were out in full force to assess the damage.

“We have a lot of trees down, and there is a large swath of Delta without power,” she said on Thursday, adding that a private hospital was running on a generator during the power disruption.

BC Hydro crews worked through the night, but the number of outages climbed throughout the morning.