Ice storm: hundreds of thousands of homes without power in Eastern Canada
Ice storm: hundreds of thousands of homes without power in eastern Canada © AFP
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Hundreds of thousands of homes in Quebec were still without electricity Friday, April 7, two days after the passage of an ice storm in eastern Canada, which killed two people and caused a lot of property damage, especially in Montreal.
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About 500,000 households remained in the dark Friday at noon, compared to 1.1 million at the height of the event. "Hydro-Québec has resolved about 50% of the situations, we have the objective that tonight, about 80% of homes will be reconnected and by tomorrow evening, 95%," said Quebec Premier François Legault at a press briefing.
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We know that for some customers, it will last until Sunday, potentially Monday, "according to Régis Tellier, spokesman for Hydro-Québec. "More favorable weather conditions" throughout the day should make it possible "to accelerate the restoration of service," he said.
In the meantime, the city of Montreal, which accounted for about half of the outages, opened six temporary emergency shelters where residents without electricity spent the night. In one of them, located in the Verdun district (southwest of Montreal), about thirty people had come to warm up, drink coffee, eat or charge their electronic devices on the first day of the Easter long weekend.
Two dead
Two deaths have been recorded by authorities since the beginning of the storm: a resident of eastern Ontario killed by the fall of a tree Wednesday, and a sexagenarian in Quebec fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his garden Thursday.
Montreal health authorities have also recorded about sixty reports of carbon monoxide poisoning, families using barbecues inside their homes to keep warm.
► Slideshow Canada's ice storm: at least two dead and extensive damage
Hundreds of employees of the Quebec metropolis were still deployed on the ground Friday, including in parks where many branches littered the ground after collapsing under the weight of the ice. Under a temperature of around 1°C, the ice had melted, but gusts of wind shook the trees, with the risk of new falling branches. The authorities still advised the population not to approach the electrical wires.
The storm hit Quebec and Ontario, Canada's two most populous provinces. This is the biggest outage on Quebec's power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.
(with AFP)
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