One of the worst ice storms since the catastrophic one of 1998 caused heavy damage across southwestern Quebec on Wednesday, leaving between 15 and 30 mm of ice in its wake and more than 920,000 households without electricity .
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In Montreal alone, more than 400,000 families had to resign themselves to dinner by candlelight and spend the evening in the dark.
MARIO BEAUREGARD/QMI AGENCY
The weight of the 15 to 25 mm of ice that fell on the island, depending on the sector, got the better of many trees and branches that fell in the four corners of the city, causing a plethora of breakdowns in addition to causing material damage, in particular by damaging parked cars.
“Teams from the City of Montreal and Hydro-Quebec are present everywhere in Montreal to ensure safety and restore electricity to homes affected by outages,” assured the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, in the evening.
The road network has also suffered greatly, the Ministry of Transport (MTQ) having been forced to completely close the Victoria Bridge due to icing. Highway 730, in Saint-Constant, was also closed in the evening following the overturning of a 53-foot truck which completely blocked the lanes, without causing any injuries.
Photo QMI Agency, Maxime Deland
Several other closures and incidents were reported throughout the day by the MTQ. However, the Sûreté du Québec did not report any serious accident.
“It’s certainly a big event,” admitted bluntly Dominic Morin, spokesperson for Environment Canada, pointing out that the quantities of ice received are impressive.
At Montreal-Trudeau airport, one flight in six had to be canceled and one flight in four was delayed, according to the specialized site Flightaware.
Montreal is the most affected region with 425,184 customers without power, followed by Montérégie (201,041 customers) and Outaouais (127,173 customers).
The Laval and Laurentides regions are also affected by the situation, with 65,621 and 55,027 homes respectively in the dark.
The Outaouais in the dark
All things considered, however, it was the Outaouais that suffered the most from the storm by far. This left nearly 30 mm of ice in Ottawa and Gatineau, said Dominic Morin.
This colossal accumulation of ice deprived more than 130,000 families of electricity, a number which had been reduced to 125,000 by mid-evening.
At the start of the afternoon, more than 75% of the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais, which surrounds Gatineau, was in the dark, according to the regional police.
“Our emergency call center is currently receiving a high volume of calls concerning trees or fallen branches on public roads. We therefore invite you to also limit your calls to 911 to less than an emergency only”, mentioned the police of the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais.
The municipality of Cantley, in particular, had to resolve to open its community center to citizens to allow them to recharge their electronic devices, take a shower or simply warm up.
Across the Ottawa River, Ottawa had to contend with about 14,000 outages by early afternoon.
The ice storm also destroyed the light rail transit that runs on the Confederation line in Ottawa, depriving it of energy. Passengers had to be evacuated by emergency services.
One of the worst storms since 1998
To restore the situation, Hydro-Québec deployed more than 500 workers on the ground.
“As the weather event is still ongoing, further outages could occur and the situation may still evolve on the ground. It is therefore unfortunately not possible to give a specific recovery time for each location,” said the state-owned company.
A sign of the large number of breakdowns, the interactive map of breakdowns, used to get an idea of the recovery time at home, did not work in the afternoon.
Wednesday’s storm had been compared, before its arrival, to the one that had swept over Quebec in April 2019, depriving approximately 400,000 households of electricity, mainly on the North Shore of Montreal.
“We are not in the same situation. It had snowed after the storm in 2019, which had complicated the recovery”, however pointed Dominic Morin, recalling that this year’s storm will be followed by a hot day which will melt the ice on Thursday.
MARIO BEAUREGARD/QMI AGENCY
In terms of the number of subscribers deprived of electricity, Wednesday’s storm can be compared to the violent wind episode that plunged 980,000 homes into darkness in the fall of 2019. The damage was then qualified by the first Minister François Legault of “worst situation since the 1998 ice storm”.
Despite the setbacks caused by the storm, the inhabitants of the southwest can console themselves by saying that it is probably the last winter storm before the arrival of spring, which should settle in for good on Sunday according to the Environment Canada forecast.