Three days after the ice storm that besieged the south of the province, less than 125,000 Hydro-Québec customers are still without power.
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A total of 123,673 customers were still without power on Saturday evening, while at the worst of the situation more than a million households found themselves in the dark.
Hydro-Quebec estimates that it should have restored power to about one million customers by Sunday. Note that at midnight Saturday, more than 800,000 homes had found electricity. However, some may have to wait a few more days.
“From now on, the recovery rate will decrease,” said Maxime Nadeau, director – Energy system control at Hydro-Québec. Indeed, major outages affecting a greater number of customers having been repaired, the teams are now working on smaller sections that will bring power to fewer people at a time.
Some 1,500 Hydro-Québec employees are working hard to restore power to all homes.
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Exceptionally, food markets will be able to open on Easter Sunday in the six most affected regions, Minister Fitzgibbon also announced during a press briefing on Saturday.
The regions most affected by outages are:
- Laurentides: 1,444 customers without electricity
- Laval: 9,922 customers without electricity
- Montérégie: 13,399 customers without electricity
- Montreal: 83,976 customers out of 1,084,059 customers without electricity
- Outaouais: 14,701 customers without electricity