Hydro-Québec customers in St-Michel without electricity for third day
Posted December 17, 2024 9:09 am.
Last Updated December 18, 2024 10:39 am.
Around 440 Hydro-Québec customers in Montreal’s Saint-Michel borough were still being affected Tuesday afternoon by a blackout that started on Saturday.
Six people — two adults and four children — were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning after they lit a barbecue to keep warm.
“The population concerned is advised not to use dangerous heating systems. Generators are currently being installed to connect the affected homes,” Urgences-santé told CityNews in a statement.
Hydro-Québec says crews were installing five additional generators “so that all customers will have power by the end of the day” Tuesday.
“The 12 generators in total will remain on site for some time, even if the outage is repaired, to ensure that the network remains stable,” spokesperson Louis-Olivier Batty told CityNews Tuesday.
He adds work on the underground network is “progressing well.”
“Our teams hope to be able to test by this evening whether it’s working,” he said.
At its height, 1,200 customers without power
According to the province’s utility, the situation began at 2:45 a.m. on Saturday and affected people from 53rd Street to about 41st Street, between Pie-IX Blvd. and 24th Avenue.
“We are aware that this situation is difficult for our customers, and we are making every effort to restore service as quickly as possible,” Hydro told CityNews in an email.
On Monday, at around 5:30 p.m., after completing repair work, Hydro says they restored service on the line, but then, “at 6:30 p.m., a new fault occurred, taking the line offline. Faced with the difficulty of repairing the outage on our network, we continued with the installation of generators that we had begun during the day on Monday. By 9 p.m., we had successfully restored power to over 300 customers.”
Hydro adds that they continued to deploy generators throughout the night. At 6 a.m. Tuesday morning, almost 60 per cent of the 1,200 customers affected by the blackout were powered by generators.
“We had to install a dozen mobile generators, which are the size of an 18-wheel truck, making them a complex installation in an urban neighborhood with limited space. We’d like to acknowledge the city’s cooperation in helping us move the vehicles so we could install the generators,” the Crown utility said.
Emergency warming centres open
The borough opened emergency warming centres with free shuttles to the centres:
- Rene-Goupil swimming pool, 4250 Parc-Rene-Goupil Street
- Saint-Rene-Goupil Church, 4251 Parc-Rene-Goupil Street
- Saint Michel Arena, 3440 East Jarry Street
Shuttle pick up spots are in front of Bienville Elementary School at 9275 25th Ave. or the Rene-Goupil Community Educational Centre at 4105 47th Street.
Multiple Hydro crews on the field
“At the same time, our teams are still in the field, continuing their work to locate the source of the outage and repair the line in order to restore service as quickly as possible. The generators will remain installed until we have permanently repaired the faulty underground power line.”
Hydro field crews continued their work throughout the night and 14 crews will continue restoration efforts throughout the day.
They explain that on Saturday, a defect appeared on their underground lines in the area, which caused the outage. It was impossible to detect the weakness before the fault was triggered, since they are underground.
Montreal police (SPVM) officers went door-to-door to assist residents, a heat station was opened, and an emergency shelter was set up Sunday for affected families.
Hydro-Québec also explains that the power restoration will be gradual, sector by sector. This is not to create an overload of the grid by the heating system, which will start up again all at once.
