From 100,000 to 150,000 customers could have to wait until Monday to find electricity, warns Hydro-Quebec, at a time when the rate of reconnection slows down.
Still, the state-owned utility plans to have a million customers back online by midnight tonight, about 72 hours after a major bout of freezing rain plunged more than 1.1 million into the dark on Wednesday.
More than 254,000 of them remained without electricity around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, while about 1,500 Hydro-Quebec employees were working on the ground to reconnect them.
“We are in our 3e daytime […] there we really fall into the part of our plan where we will start to restore outages where fewer customers are affected. The rate of recovery will decrease. Breakdowns could take longer to repair in areas that are more difficult to access, ”indicated the director of energy system control at Hydro-Québec, Maxime Nadeau, in a press briefing on Saturday.
In order to give a boost to Quebecers who have been deprived of power for a long time, grocery stores will be able to be open on Sunday, even if it is a public holiday for them, announced the minister responsible for the Metropolis, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
Large surfaces will be able to open without restriction from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., then respecting a restriction of at most four people who ensure their operation outside these hours.
Break down again
To households frustrated to have lost power again after it was restored, Maxime Nadeau of Hydro-Quebec confirms that this is unfortunately a possibility in the case of certain major reconnections.
“It happens when you reconnect customers who have been interrupted for a long time, it requires more electricity, so it can generate an additional break that must be repaired on the network,” he said on Saturday.
SCREENSHOT
The Director of Energy System Control at Hydro-Québec, Maxime Nadeau, and the Minister responsible for the Metropolis, Pierre Fitzgibbon, at a press briefing, Saturday
The Montreal region remains the most affected by these blackouts with 160,288 customers waking up without heating or electricity.
The other three most affected regions are those of Montérégie with 31,823 affected, Laval with 26,020 customers in the dark, and Outaouais, with around 27,774 customers affected.
More than 8,000 customers of the government corporation in the Laurentides and Lanaudière regions are still hoping to find electricity again, on the eve of Easter celebrations, a time conducive to family reunions.
Work is progressing
Friday’s winds, with gusts of up to 75 km/h, however, complicated Hydro-Québec’s task on Friday, when tree branches near power lines were already weakened by the ice.
Since Thursday, about 1,400 breakdowns had been added, noted Régis Tellier, vice-president of operations and maintenance for the state-owned company.
On Twitter, Internet users have begun to get impatient, calling on the state-owned company to find out when they will be reconnected.
In Montreal and elsewhere, temporary emergency accommodation centers were opened overnight from Thursday to Friday to allow people without electricity to warm up while waiting for the situation to recover.
With The Canadian Press