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

The storm affected Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces in Canada. Two people died and nearly a million people were without electricity Thursday evening, April 6, after the passage of an ice storm in eastern Canada. This is the biggest outage on Quebec’s power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.

Two deaths have been recorded by the authorities: a resident of eastern Ontario killed by a falling tree on Wednesday, and a sixty-something in Quebec fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his garden on Thursday. “It’s a tough day for Montrealers, for people across Quebec and parts of Ontario who are suffering from the power outages.”declared the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on the move to Montreal.

The situation now “under control”

The storm caused extensive material damage, particularly in Montreal. On Thursday evening, road services were still hard at work clearing streets and roads littered with thousands of fallen trees due to the weight of the ice, often by damaging power lines. “Montreal is devastated”, but the situation is “under control”said the Quebec Minister of Economy and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, during a press briefing on Thursday, when the warnings for freezing rain were lifted.