The violent winds that blew in Quebec starting Wednesday evening, mixed with rain and snow depending on the location, caused several hundred power outages in a large number of regions.
Around 8:50 a.m. Thursday, Hydro-Québec reported a total of 1,068 outages affecting nearly 160,000 of its subscribers. These data increased during the evening and early night, reaching 250,000 customers of the state company, but the situation improved somewhat thereafter.
Consult the status of the Hydro-Québec network
In the Montreal region, around 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, breakdowns immobilized three Réseau express métropolitain (REM) trains on the tracks, stranding passengers inside, particularly on the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge.
Passengers on a first train were able to get out very quickly. Another train, which broke down in the Pointe-Saint-Charles district, near Bridge Street, was then evacuated using the emergency staircases and the passengers were picked up by buses.
As for the one on the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge, the task was more complicated. Some of the passengers reported on social media that they were stuck for almost two hours.
“We were trying to replenish the track to be able to remove the train itself with the passengers inside, but it was taking a little so we sent another train to evacuate them,” explained Francis Labbé, spokesperson for CDPQ Infra, the REM manager.
According to Hydro-Québec, around a hundred teams were dispatched to the field to repair the affected installations and 370 more will be mobilized Thursday morning, the state company announced on the social network X.
Environment Canada had issued warnings of violent winds and sudden cooling of temperatures for almost all regions of Quebec on Wednesday morning, including violent westerly winds blowing up to 90 kilometers per hour in the evening in the Montreal region. .
Thursday, temperatures are expected to stay below freezing by several degrees. The forecast is for them to rise again on Friday, and starting Saturday, at least four days of spring-like weather are expected to occur in many areas.