Power restored for Hydro clients who lost power due to forest fires
Posted June 1, 2023 4:09 pm.
Last Updated June 2, 2023 1:45 pm.
Power has now been restored for most of the 230,000 Hydro-Québec clients who were without power as of 4 p.m. on Thursday afternoon – many in parts of the Greater Montreal area.
According to the utility, the outages were linked to forest fires in the Côte-Nord region.
Montreal was the worst-affected region, with 93,000 customers in the dark. In the Montérégie, more than 42,000 customers were off the grid. Then Lanaudière and the Laurentians were among the hardest hit regions.
By 5:20 p.m., the number overall in the province had gown down to just over 102,000 without power.
In a tweet Hydro-Québec adding: “We currently have two transmission lines unavailable, for this reason, but our facilities are not damaged. The smoke and heat have triggered protective mechanisms on the network. Power is being restored gradually.”
By 5:38 p.m. just under 42,000 customers were without electricity and by 5:54 p.m. that number was at about 21,000.
That number jumped back up slightly at 6:16 p.m., as 22,983 customers were without power. At 6:48 p.m., it jumped again to 38,640 customers without power.
There were some 80 fires burning across the province on Thursday prompting around 500 evacuations.
Il y a présentement près de 250 k clients en #panne. La situation est liée aux feux de forêt dans la région de la Côte-Nord. Nous avons actuellement deux lignes de transport indisponibles, pour cette raison, mais nos installations ne sont pas endommagées. La fumée et la chaleur… pic.twitter.com/YM0Wx05Uy6
— Hydro-Québec (@hydroquebec) June 1, 2023
To verify the status of an outage and how many there are, head to Hydro-Québec’s website.
