Quebec Ice Storm: Power outages still affecting 385,000 Hydro customers
Posted April 7, 2023 8:40 am.
Last Updated April 7, 2023 6:22 pm.
Hydro-Québec still hopes to restore power to some 80 per cent of its customers by Friday night, and 95 per cent by Saturday night – but some may have to wait until Sunday or Monday to get their heat and lights back on.
Data finally fell below 600,000 customers without power Friday at 11:45 a.m., but there were still 385,000 customers without power at 6 p.m. At the height of the crisis, more than 1.1 million households in Quebec were in the dark.
“We have more than 500,000 customers where the power was restored yesterday, we hope to have 300,000 only left after end of tonight,” said Maxime Nadeau, directeur Contrôle du système énergétique, Hydro-Québec, at an update on the province’s situation on Friday morning.
The most affected regions continue to be Montreal, where more than half of the outages in the province are concentrated, the Laurentians, Laval, and the Outaouais.
“More than 1,400 [people] are on the field working hard to restore power as soon as possible to everybody,” added Nadeau, but says that some clients may still have outages come Sunday or Monday.
Hydro saying that winds on Friday could complicate things, but they remain optimistic.
“There’s no question that we are living with the crisis, energy crisis,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec Economy Minister at the press conference with Hydro. “We’re not where we were in ‘98. The transmission line, for example, are all in operation. The strategic assets of Hydro-Québec are all been maintained, which is good in 1998 with a different issue. So thanks to the investments that was made as far as what’s going on in the urban area, of course we’re dealing with the vegetation control. So dealing with trees, so it’s difficult to prevent that from happening unless we cut all the trees. Now we’ve got 1,400 people on the ground right now working to address all these issues.”
“Given that we were at the peak of 1.2 million people without service almost, and now more than 45 per cent have been re-established within like 24 to 38 hours. I think that’s a good news. Of course, the last to be reconnected could be done, as he said, on the Sunday or Monday, but I think in the circumstances, I think we need to be satisfied.”
“It’s very reasonable to think that by midnight on Friday, we should have just under 80 percent of the people who were without power restored. In any case, that’s what we’re working on,” Francis Labbé, a spokesman for Hydro-Québec, told The Canadian Press.
He also invited residents in the areas affected by the outages to check the condition of the mast that runs along the outside of their homes and allows them to be connected to the Hydro-Québec network.
“If the mast is damaged, the correction must be done by a master electrician before our services are restored. It’s very important that people make sure that their mast is in good condition and not damaged so that we can bring back the power,” explained Labbé.
Damage from Wednesday’s ice storm is concentrated in Montreal
In Montreal, about 230,000 customers were still without power on Friday at 6 p.m. There were 50,000 in the same situation in Montérégie, 41,000 in Laval, 17,000 in the Laurentians and over 36,000 in the Outaouais.
A significant number of branches, and even entire trees, fell under the weight of the freezing rain in many places. On Thursday, a man in his 60s died in the Montérégie region when he became trapped under a heavy branch on his property when he tried to cut it down.
“I don’t think there can be any better justification for telling Quebecers to be careful, whether it’s with tree branches or wires,” said Premier François Legault during a press briefing Thursday afternoon.
At the same meeting with reporters, Legault also asked Quebecers affected by the blackouts to be patient as power is restored, while indicating that the situation was not serious enough to declare a state of emergency or call in the military.
“It’s an emergency, we’re dealing with it,” the premier explained from Hydro-Québec’s grid control center in Montreal.
“Given that it is concentrated in Greater Montreal and the Outaouais, we are even able to ask teams from other regions to come and help us,” he added.
So there is no question “for the moment” of having recourse to the help of the military. Earlier Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the ground in Montreal, had indicated that the military would be available if needed.
The city of Chateauguay in the Montérégie region, however, did deploy emergency measures to help its residents, as thousands of its citizens were without power and hundreds of homes were experiencing sewer backups.
In Montreal and elsewhere, temporary emergency shelters were opened on Thursday night to allow people without power to keep warm until the situation is restored.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 7, 2023.
