Over One Million Hydro-Québec Customers Without Power After Ice Storm

Over one million Hydro-Québec customers in Montreal and Southwestern Quebec are without power following the recent ice storm. On Thursday morning, officials from the company shared that the crews are hard at work and are trying to restore power as soon as possible. The power issue will be resolved for some customers today, while others will have to wait longer.

The recent ice storm covered Montreal and Southwestern Quebec with a layer of ice and caused power outages for over a million Hydro-Québec customers. According to the company, crews have been working all night and about 1,000 workers have been deployed on the ground.

Hydro-Québec stated that it is “confident of being able to restore power for some impacted customers today,” but it cannot share an exact timeline. Schools have been canceled in most of Montreal.

They are prioritizing hospitals and municipal infrastructure but there is a lot of work to be done. According to the minister responsible for the Montreal-area, Pierre Fitzgibbon, the crews are dealing with over 2,200 outages. Fortunately, a quarter of these outages are large which means they can be addressed to restore power for a larger group of customers.

The outages caused by the ice storms were mainly due to falling branches or trees that gave way under the weight of the ice. It is estimated that about 300 trees fell in the city and a spokesperson for the city asked residents to help workers by putting fallen branches on the curb, making it a little easier for them to be picked up. Fitzgibbon added, “I think it’s under control. Montreal is devastated currently… but we think it will be under control very quickly.”

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