The 35 millimeters of ice that fell on Greater Montreal caused quite a stir. A man died crushed by a branch in Montérégie and the authorities have multiplied calls for caution. About 700,000 households remained without power Thursday evening after the biggest ice storm in Quebec since 1998. In the era of climate change, Hydro-Quebec and Premier François Legault agree that the network electricity must improve its “resilience” in the face of extreme weather events.
An almost apocalyptic air hung over the metropolis on Thursday. Trees crushed in the middle of the streets impeded traffic on several lanes. Many traffic lights were no longer working, forcing motorists to stop at every intersection. Traffic jammed the Victoria, Samuel-De Champlain and Jacques-Cartier bridges, all three having been closed for long minutes because of the danger of falling ice.
These twelve hours of freezing rain constitute the largest episode of ice since the crisis of 1998. It had then fallen 125 mm of ice, compared to 35 mm for the storm of this week.
In a context of climate change, the Hydro-Québec network must prepare its “resilience” in the face of an increase in attacks from Mother Nature, said the outgoing president and CEO of the state-owned company, Sophie Brochu. These extreme climatic episodes which lead to power outages, “we will experience more and more of them”, she said. ” For sure. »
The number of power outages in Quebec has indeed been on the rise for several years, confirms a recent report by the Auditor General of Quebec.
“Things are changing, worried Prime Minister François Legault. It’s true, there are more and more climatic events. »
Is burying the electrical wires a possible solution? “To bury all the wires of Hydro-Quebec, we are talking about approximately 100 billion dollars. You have to be realistic, ”said Mr. Legault, thus rejecting this option. “That does not mean that there are not other ways of protecting yourself” from the vagaries of the climate, continued the Prime Minister, who noted the government’s interest in investing more in the facilities of Hydro-Quebec.
Not necessarily because of the ice
No study has yet proven that icy episodes will increase in intensity in the future. “In southern Quebec, we expect a decrease in the frequency of ice storms” in the coming decades, rather argues Christopher McCray, a scientist from Ouranos, a Quebec research consortium in climate adaptation, which signed a study about it last year. The finding of Mr. McCray and his colleagues corroborates other studies, published in recent years, which also attest to a northward shift of the zone prone to freezing rain.
In Quebec, it’s only north of 50e parallel, i.e. at the height of Chibougamau, that the freezing rain could become more abundant due to climate change.
The conditions necessary for the formation of black ice are very precise: the air must be hot at altitude, in order to melt the snowflakes, but below zero degrees near the surface, to freeze the drops which fall to the ground. However, in southern Quebec, the days per winter when ground conditions will be cold enough are tending to become rarer.
There remains some vagueness on the frequency of extreme ice events. “People tend to think that extreme events will get worse and worse,” McCray says. With the ice storm, we are not yet certain of what will happen. To have a clear statistical trend on extreme events, a lot of data is needed. The Ouranos team is currently working to answer this question.
The sky falling on your head
Of the 1.1 million Quebecers without power at the height of the crisis, about 700,000 remained in the dark on Thursday evening, when these lines were written. About 90% of these outages were concentrated in Montreal, Laval, Montérégie and Outaouais.
In town, large slabs of ice fell randomly everywhere, forcing passers-by to look up to avoid being hit. The few cafes with electricity and the Internet were overflowing with destitute teleworkers.
Hydro-Québec set itself the target of resolving 70 to 80% of power outages by the end of the day on Friday.
The storm caused one death. A sexagenarian from Montérégie found himself prisoner under a “big branch” which would have fallen on him while he was trying to prune the trees on his land, confirmed the Sûreté du Québec.
Meanwhile, help is getting organized
The City of Châteauguay, in Montérégie, was so affected by the ice storm that it resigned itself to deploying emergency measures. The basements of more than 250 homes were flooded due to unmanageable sewer backups due to lack of electricity.
Hydro-Québec directed its priority of intervention to Châteauguay “to be able to quickly resupply the pumping stations and to help the victims in the current state of the situation”, wanted to reassure Thursday afternoon the vice- president of operations and maintenance at Hydro-Québec, Régis Tellier.
At the end of the afternoon Thursday, only three pumping stations out of the 44 in the municipality remained non-functional. The level of the Châteauguay River still remains very high and the risk of flooding remains high.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the trip to the metropolis to see the extent of the damage and offer his support. “We are here to help, but it depends on a formal request from the province and the municipality, which have a lot of staff,” he said with Mayor Valérie Plante.
More than 350 trees and nearly 1,600 branches fell on the territory of Montreal, said the latter. Issuance of illegal parking tickets has been temporarily suspended to facilitate street cleaning. Heat drop-in centers have begun to open, notably in Anjou and in the Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension district, for those whose homes begin to be too cold.
The weather for the next few days will help the busy forces restore power and circulation. Already, Thursday afternoon, the mercury hovering around 8 degrees Celsius had deglazed most of the trees. The return of the sun (and heat) is expected for the weekend, with electricity or not.
With Zacharie Goudreault, Ulysse Bergeron, Alexis Riopel, Lisa-Marie Gervais, Marco Fortier and Alexandre Robillard
With La Presse canadienne