Quebec Ice Storm: Power outages still affecting over 670,000 Hydro customers

Hydro-Québec still hopes to restore power to some 80 per cent of its customers by Friday night, but some may have to wait until the the weekend before they can get their heat and lights back on.

Data finally fell below 700,000 customers without power late Thursday night, but there were still 678,571 customers without power as of 8 a.m. Friday morning. At the height of the crisis, more than 1.1 million households in Quebec were in the dark.

Hydro-Québec plans to provide an update on the situation at 11 a.m. Friday – stream it LIVE on our website.

During the day on Thursday, more than 400,000 customers were reconnected to the network by the 1,100 people mobilized on the ground by Hydro-Québec, explained the utility on late Thursday night on its Twitter account.

After being suspended for the night, reconnection efforts resumed early Friday morning for another 16-hour day, with 1,300 workers on the ground.

“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 348,000 customers were still without power on Friday morning 8 a.m.. There were 95,000 in the same situation in Montérégie, 82,000 in Laval, close to 62,000 in the Laurentians and over 55,000 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.