Two days after the ice storm, 299,934 Hydro customers had still not found electricity as of Friday 10:00 p.m. Some 1,400 employees are busy in the field reconnecting subscribers.
The Crown corporation provided an update at 11 a.m. this morning.
The regions most affected by outages are:
- Lanaudière: 3,578 customers without electricity
- Laurentides: 9,987 customers without electricity
- Laval: 31,165 customers without electricity
- Montérégie: 38,370 customers without electricity
- Montreal: 186,474 customers out of 1,084,059 customers without electricity
- Outaouais: 29,790 customers without electricity
*** See the most recent detailed Hydro-Québec balance sheet by clicking here
Worst ice storm in 25 years
The state-owned company predicts that 300,000 customers will still be without power this Friday evening. It maintains its objective of yesterday to reconnect 800,000 homes by Friday evening. Already, 500,000 people have been restored to power since operations began on Thursday.
Although it is still too early to know when everyone will be reconnected to the grid, the state company estimates that some may only have electricity again on Sunday or even Monday.
“This reading, we will have it during the day. With the winds, you have to see the impact because sometimes there are new breakdowns that appear to us. So it would be a little premature for me to throw in a number for the last customer. [rebranché]explained Régis Tellier, Vice-President, Operations and Maintenance at Hydro-Québec.
The latter also specified that with the milder weather announced over the weekend, the approximately 1,400 employees in the field should be able to increase the pace of their work.
For his part, the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, said he was very satisfied with the management of the crisis by the state-owned company. He also reminded the population to remain vigilant, leaving the teams to deal with branches and electrical wires on the ground, given the danger that this can constitute.