Hydro-Quebec maintains that the vast majority of its customers without electricity since the passage of the storm last Friday will be supplied again by Wednesday.
However, the senior director of operations and maintenance of Hydro-Quebec for the Centre-du-Quebec, Julie Sbeghen, could not give Monday a precise end date for all of the breakdowns. Those that remain after Wednesday, more complex or more distant, will “be done surgically,” she said.
Large trees have fallen on roads and some remote places are only accessible by snowmobile and snowshoes.
The balance sheet, which stood at 130,000 customers without electricity on Sunday morning, fell to 32,900 on Tuesday around 9:45 a.m., or 1,621 different outages.
The president and CEO of the state corporation, Sophie Brochu, urged the population to wait for the arrival of the Hydro-Québec teams: “You can have the irrepressible desire to get your hands dirty. Please don’t touch the trees, don’t touch the wires, it’s for your safety. »
Space heaters that use fuel can also be very dangerous if used indoors, as they create suffocation and poisoning hazards.
Mme Brochu also recalled that several municipalities had opened emergency centers to help affected citizens.
According to Mme Sbeghen, the arrival of milder weather will help the approximately 1,200 Hydro-Québec employees to restore the situation more quickly.
At the height of the storm, nearly 380,000 Quebec customers no longer had access to power. According to Hydro-Québec, more than 670,000 subscribers have been affected at one time or another since Thursday evening.
The Capitale-Nationale strongly affected
By mid-morning Tuesday, the region hardest hit by power outages remained that of the Capitale-Nationale, with 11,168 Hydro-Québec subscribers still without electricity.
The other regions most affected were Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (5,992 customers), Côte-Nord (5,709 customers), Laurentides (3,398 customers) and Mauricie (2,663 customers).
Added to this were Bas-Saint-Laurent (1,462 clients), Outaouais (969 clients) and Montérégie (582 clients).
Teams are also moved from one region to another to ensure that the most affected areas have the necessary number of teams on the ground for the scope of the work to be carried out.
Transport disruptions
Quebecers traveling for the holiday season should also note that some disruptions are still in effect in the various modes of transportation.
Environment Canada’s weather alerts were lifted Tuesday morning, but there was still snow on some roads.
Tuesday morning, Transports Quebec repeated that users who travel between Quebec and Saguenay by electric vehicle do not have access to charging stations for an indefinite period in the Laurentides wildlife reserve, at l’Étape. Motorists are advised to download the Québec 511 application to stay informed of current events on the road network.
At Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport, several flights scheduled to leave Monday were delayed or canceled, but most planes also managed to leave the tarmac. At Jean-Lesage International Airport in Quebec City, one of the regions hardest hit by the storm, more than a third of departures were late or cancelled.
Rail carrier VIA Rail has canceled all Christmas Day and Christmas Day services between Toronto and Montreal and between Toronto and Ottawa due to the consequences of a Canadian National (CN) train derailment on Christmas Eve . These lines reopen on Tuesday according to a modified schedule, the company announced on Twitter.
Fierce winter conditions grounded nine VIA Rail trains overnight from Friday to Saturday, in some cases leaving passengers without food or water for more than 12 hours. On Saturday afternoon, federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra described the situation at VIA Rail as unacceptable.