More than a week after violent and deadly thunderstorms hit Quebec and Ontario, a few thousand homes remain without power.
About 6,000 Hydro-Quebec customers were still without power on Sunday afternoon, mainly in the Laurentians, Outaouais and Lanaudière, according to the Info-pannes website.
The day before, Hydro-Québec had announced that more than 1000 interventions were still necessary. Repairs, in sometimes remote areas, only restore service to a small number of customers at a time, the state-owned company said.
In Ontario, 9,900 Hydro Ottawa customers are still affected by outages, Sunday at 2 p.m.
However, the company that serves the federal capital region said it had reconnected 94% of customers affected by power outages since the storms the previous weekend.
“Over the past nine days, Hydro Ottawa has completed construction work that would have taken a full year under normal circumstances,” she said in a statement, noting that high winds on May 21 caused five times more outages than the tornadoes of 2018.
In the rest of Ontario, nearly 12,000 Hydro One customers remain without power Sunday afternoon.
The Ontario company has warned that stricken customers in the Bancroft, Perth and Tweed areas are expected to be without power for several more days or even weeks.
Inclement weather on May 21 killed at least 11 people in Ontario and Quebec. The latest death, reported Thursday, is that of a 58-year-old man who OPP say was struck by a falling tree in a remote area of the town of Marmora & Lake.
Financial aid
Special financial assistance was announced on Saturday by the Quebec government to cover food losses suffered by beneficiaries of social assistance programs following power outages.
Social assistance recipients who have been affected by an outage lasting more than 24 hours are eligible for this assistance of $75 per person. The maximum amount for each family is $300.