“The vast majority of our customers will be restored by Wednesday,” Hydro-Québec’s senior director of operations and maintenance for Centre-du-Québec, Julie Sbeghen, announced Monday at a virtual press conference. .
However, it could not give a precise end date for all the outages. Those who will remain after Wednesday, more complex or more distant, will “be done surgically”.
The organization’s President and CEO, Sophie Brochu, explained that certain situations are more complex, such as “there are large trees that have fallen on the roads” and since certain isolated places are only accessible by snowmobile and on snowshoes.
The balance sheet, which amounted to 130,000 customers without electricity on Sunday morning, fell to 35,200 on Tuesday around 6:15 a.m., or 1,632 different outages.
Mme 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. Among other things, a dozen helicopters took off to spot and do icebreaking, now that visibility is better.
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
At the start of the morning on Tuesday, the region hardest hit by power outages remained that of the Capitale-Nationale, with 12,026 Hydro-Québec subscribers still without electricity.
The other regions most affected were Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (6,779 customers), Côte-Nord (5,833 customers), Laurentides (3,473 customers) and Mauricie (3,122 customers).
Added to this were Bas-Saint-Laurent (1,638 clients), Outaouais (915 clients) and Montérégie (468 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.
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.
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 will reopen on Tuesday on 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.