Power outages in Quebec | Seniors who were supposed to be prioritized had to wait in the dark

Despite their priority status, residences for seniors (RPA) in Montreal were without electricity for more than four days since they were not on the Public Security lists. Hydro-Québec intends to take corrective measures while relatives of residents denounce “unacceptable” management.

At a time when tens of thousands of customers were still waiting to find electricity, at the Providence Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Westmount One residences, in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, power did not return until early Sunday evening.

Thus, elderly people, although autonomous, remained plunged into darkness in their apartment for four days, according to testimonies from employees met on site and relatives collected by The Press.

“It is not at all true that the RPAs were reconnected first, lamented one of them. There may be light in the hallways, but in the apartments it is dark. »

Unregistered RPAs

Indeed, hospitals, CHSLDs and seniors’ residences had to be reconnected as a priority, Hydro-Québec announced earlier this week.

Asked if some of these establishments still had no power at the end of Sunday morning, the vice-president, operations and maintenance, at Hydro-Québec, Régis Tellier, replied that “at [s]has knowledge, no […] unless there is an event at the moment”.

In the evening, a spokesperson for the state corporation, Francis Labbé, however, shed new light on the situation. Indeed, he admitted, some RPAs were not registered as such on the lists of their Regional Organization of Civil Security.

“What we find is that there are sometimes organizations that are RPAs in fact, but perhaps not registered as such or which have not come forward as such,” he said. indicated by adding that these RPAs were therefore not “raised to the level where they should have been”.

Hydro-Québec intends to revise its processes following this episode, specifies Francis Labbé. “We will come back to this, to see if we have the right codes and all the information. »

Stuck in an elevator

However, this situation caused a lot of headaches for relatives of residents such as the Manoir Outremont, where the electricity returned on Saturday afternoon, three days after the start of the outage.

Owned by the management company Cogir, the private establishment of a dozen floors has more than 300 accommodations, including a care unit for people with cognitive disorders.

On Wednesday, a resident was stuck for at least an hour in a broken elevator, said his daughter, Pascale Lacroix, whose two parents live at Manoir Outremont.

“They called me at 5:30 p.m. to tell me that they couldn’t find my father, and they took him out of the elevator at 6:20 p.m.,” Ms.^me Lacroix, whose emails to the management of Manoir Outremont went unanswered.

Thursday, the residence contacted her to pick up her parents.

She temporarily housed her father in her home, but her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, remained in the prosthetic unit without heat or light the whole time.

“She hasn’t been out for three years, she doesn’t recognize us,” explains M^me The cross.

” This is unacceptable ”

Frantz André can’t believe what he saw inside the Manoir Outremont, where his mother lives.

“There was no elevator, no light. People had to go down the stairs in the dark,” he said. Aged 93, her mother was very affected by the cold. “She’s not like before. »

According to him, all residences should have a generator at their disposal in case a breakdown lasts several days. ” This is unacceptable. A company like this should have had an emergency protocol. Everyone was panicked,” he said.

Some residents have been taken in by their families until the power returns. This is particularly the case of Vivianne who brought her mother back to the residence, Sunday morning.

“I didn’t think it was safe to leave her here. There was no more light on the stairs. Imagine if there had been a fire”, denounces the one who did not wish to be identified by her full name.

Martin Côté, whose mother is also a resident, wonders about the time Hydro-Québec took to reconnect the private establishment. “For a residence of 300 apartments, I find it really surprising that the outage lasted so long,” he notes.

A political intervention

Joined on Sunday, the president of the Société de gestion Cogir, Frédéric Soucy, defended the management of the business from the outage at Manoir Outremont.

The facility did have a diesel generator that powered hallway lights, some of the facility’s kitchen units and an emergency elevator, he said.

Flashlights and fluorescent bracelets were distributed to all residents who were also offered meals even if their lease did not provide for them, and the staff was doubled.

The company, however, intervened on Saturday morning with the cabinet of health and energy ministers when it found that the RPA was the only building on its power line that had not been reconnected.

Cogir, however, had no explanation to provide as to why Manoir Outremont had to wait so long before being reconnected. “We will probably ask for it in the next few days,” he said.

Residents of the Manoir Royal Saint-Eustache, another RPA managed by Cogir, also had to wait until Saturday to find electricity, while other establishments of the company were able to be reconnected earlier.

Hydro on track to achieve its goal

If the trend continues, Hydro-Quebec will be able to restore power to 95% of its customers before Monday as promised, even if some households will have to resign themselves to waiting longer.

Around 9:45 p.m., there were still 44,924 customers without electricity. Montreal remained the most affected region with 29,832 customers without electricity, compared to around 190,000 at the same time the day before.

Outaouais (6,239), Montérégie (5,580) and Laval (3,138) follow with the largest number of Hydro-Québec customers still without electricity.