Just over 200,000 Hydro-Quebec subscribers remained without power shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Friday due to the elements that raged during the previous hours.
The Montreal region remained the most affected with more than 78,905 customers without electricity, followed by Montérégie with around 69,990 subscribers. Many addresses were also without electricity in Lanaudière (32,036), Laval (11,523), the Laurentians (5,035) and the Capitale-Nationale (3,012).
The majority of these outages were caused by weather events and were no longer related to the James Bay forest fires, as was the case earlier Thursday, a Hydro-Quebec spokeswoman confirmed. Caroline Des Rosiers The Canadian Press.
She said it could take 24 to 48 hours to restore power to all affected customers. “There are still a significant number of downed customers,” she said.
The state-owned company Thursday night reported broken poles, ground wires and broken trees that are on top of equipment.
New blackouts due to forest fires
Earlier in the day Thursday, a large number of customers were left without power due to forest fires in the James Bay region.
“It was the dense smoke that hit three transmission lines from James Bay that caused the triggering of protective measures on the lines,” explained Francis Labbé, spokesperson for Hydro-Québec.
The fine particles carried by this dense smoke allow the electricity to leave the transmission lines to hit the ground, literally serving as a ground, which creates voltage variations in the transmission lines and causes the initiation of protective measures.
This situation mainly affected Greater Montreal, depriving nearly 540,000 subscribers of power.
Around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, all outages were related to weather events, and no longer to the triggering of network protection mechanisms.
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