A tenth Ontario victim was added to the toll of violent storms that swept across Quebec and Ontario over the weekend. Just over 166,000 Hydro-Quebec customers are still without power on Monday afternoon, while the Crown corporation aims to reconnect eight out of ten Quebecers still in the dark by the end of the day.
Posted at 8:16 a.m.
Updated at 3:18 p.m.
A 61-year-old man from Lakefield, Ont., is believed to have died when a tree fell during the storm, Peterborough police said Monday. His death brings to ten the number of victims of the violent storm that ravaged parts of the two provinces during the weekend.
So far, there have been nine deaths in Ontario and one in Quebec.
Meanwhile, part of Quebec is still in the dark. “We think that at the end of the day, we should have about 80% recovery. For the rest, it will be a little longer because we are at the end of the line with major work, “said the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Jonatan Julien, on Monday at a press conference at Blainville.
More than 600 teams, or more than 1,200 workers, were mobilized on Monday to restore power. This is a significant increase from the previous day. In all, the storm would have swept a perimeter of 300 kilometers in length and 100 kilometers in width, according to Mr. Julien. “For those who are without electricity, disaster service centers are open in the regions that have been impacted,” also said the minister, who hopes to see a “blitz” of recoveries on Monday.
“Today, the teams are really on the ground to rebuild, so we will replant poles, collect wires, and restore as quickly as possible the greatest number of customers. That’s really the priority of the day. And our teams are tireless,” assisted the vice-president of operations and maintenance at Hydro-Québec, Régis Tellier.
The state of play
By the end of the day, more than two-thirds of the downed customers had regained power and work was continuing hour by hour, Hydro-Québec said on Twitter. “It is impossible to give specific recovery times for the rest of the affected customers,” the organization said, however.
It also explains that some of the interruptions that persist “may take longer, due to difficult access conditions, significant damage to the network and the extent of the damage to be collected”. “These breakdowns will require a large number of targeted interventions from our teams. […] We remind you not to approach the wires on the ground for safety reasons,” insisted the Hydro-Québec teams.
The regions most affected at present by the blackouts are the Laurentians, Lanaudière and Outaouais, with each still tens of thousands of Quebecers without electricity. The Sûreté du Québec, however, did not report any major event related to the outages on Monday.
Number of customers without electricity
Laurentians: 83,573 customers out of 362,065
Lanaudière: 47,084 customers out of 263,240
Outaouais: 32,919 customers out of 224,649
All of Quebec: 166,490 customers out of 4,492,115
According to the Hydro-Québec report of 5:46 p.m.
Strong winds, heavy damage
Saturday, late afternoon, strong winds were recorded in several places in Quebec, in particular on Lake Memphremagog with gusts of up to 151 km / h, in Trois-Rivières with peaks at 96 km / h and in Gatineau up to 90 km/h. “At these high winds, the infrastructure does not hold up,” said Mr. Tellier on Monday, not saying he was surprised by the extent of the material damage, the greatest he said he had seen in at least ten years.
In Ontario, peaks of 132 km/h were recorded in the Waterloo region. In Quebec, at the height of the event, some 550,000 customers were without electricity, indicated Hydro-Quebec.
“The storm did a lot of damage in several regions, particularly in the Laurentians and the Outaouais. With Hydro-Québec, we will make sure to reconnect all Quebecers as quickly as possible. I thank the teams who work hard on the ground, ”Prime Minister François Legault had written earlier on social networks.
For now, only one victim has been listed in Quebec, a 51-year-old woman who died when the boat she was in capsized in the Ottawa River, near Masson-Angers, during Saturday’s storm.
In Ontario, thunderstorms claimed nine more lives. Eight people were killed by falling trees in locations across the province during the storm on Saturday, and a ninth was killed by a falling tree branch in the aftermath of the storm on Sunday. As of Monday morning, around 200,000 Hydro One customers were still without power.
With Vincent Larin, The PressLila Dussault, The Pressand The Canadian Press