The most recent ice storm in Quebec is coming to an end, but shortly before daybreak on Wednesday, there were still 4,500 Hydro-Quebec customers who still had no electricity in their homes, including more of 3100 on the island of Montreal.
Freezing rain fell a week earlier. At the height of the crisis, more than 1.1 million customers of the state company had no electricity.
This Wednesday, most of the other subscribers without electricity were in the Outaouais, as well as in the Centre-du-Québec and Bas-Saint-Laurent regions.
On Tuesday, Hydro-Québec spokesman Francis Labbé explained that some breakdowns to be repaired were very complex, with a lot of damage and in places that were sometimes difficult to reach for the teams.
“In several places, the breakdowns are behind the residences. Our teams must be able to access and clear all vegetation to get there. There are a lot of trees on the ground, so each outage requires a lot of work from different teams and brings fewer and fewer customers,” Labbé said.
On Tuesday, the director of the Montreal Fire Safety Service (SSIM), Richard Liebmann, announced the closure of accommodation sites and the individual care of citizens still without electricity, because the situation was improving.
For his part, the head of public security on the Executive Committee of the City of Montreal, Alain Vaillancourt, deplored the loss of thousands of trees. “For every tree that fell, we will plant another one. We want Montreal to remain resilient and part of resilience is having lots of trees. It’s not just the ice, but there are also heat episodes, heat islands, so it’s important to have a lot of trees, but they have to be well maintained,” said he explained.
In total, the City of Montreal received more than 900 calls to report fallen trees and more than 4,500 requests for fallen branches. These figures do not include data specific to Montreal parks.