an ice storm leaves three dead and significant material damage in the east of the country

A severe winter storm hit Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces in Canada. Three people died and around 400,000 homes remained in the dark on Friday at 5:30 p.m. (11:30 p.m. French time), compared to 1.1 million at the height of the bad weather. This is the biggest outage on Quebec’s power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.

A resident of eastern Ontario was killed by a falling tree on Wednesday, a man in his 60s in Quebec was fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his garden on Thursday and another man died at his home about 50 kilometers northwest of Montreal after being poisoned with carbon monoxide while using an electric generator in his garage, according to local authorities.

The Montreal health authorities have also recorded around sixty reports of carbon monoxide poisoning, families using, for example, barbecues inside their homes to warm up.

As the day progressed on Friday, the power was gradually restored. “We know that for some customers, it will last until Sunday, potentially Monday”, according to Régis Tellier, spokesperson for Hydro-Québec. The city of Montreal, where about half of the outages occurred, opened six emergency shelters. Residents without electricity were able to spend the night there.