(Montreal) Christmas celebrations are likely to remain etched in the memory as plans for reunions with family and friends, after three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, have once again fallen through for many Quebecers, this times due to a winter storm that has affected the province since Thursday evening.
Thousands of Quebecers risk spending Christmas without electricity.
Saturday morning, around 7:45 a.m., Hydro-Québec reported more than 345,000 homes, businesses and other customers still without power since the day before. No region of Quebec was spared by these power outages.
The region hardest hit remained the Capitale-Nationale with more than 82,000 subscribers without electricity when they woke up on Saturday.
The other regions most affected are Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (more than 46,000 customers), Montérégie (more than 42,000 customers), Laurentides (more than 23,000 customers) and Mauricie (more than 24,000 clients).
Added to this are the North Shore (more than 30,000 customers) and Bas-Saint-Laurent (more than 23,000 customers) where the storm raged during the night.
In a press conference late Friday afternoon, the executive vice-president of Hydro-Québec Éric Filion indicated that the objective was to “reconnect the majority of subscribers for Sunday evening”, that is Christmas Eve.
He acknowledged, however, that some customers in less populated forested areas will not have power until Monday or Tuesday.
Hydro-Québec will again provide an update on the outage situation around 11 a.m. Saturday.
Some 1,100 Hydro-Québec workers have been mobilized since Friday, including linemen and customer service teams.
Environment Canada has issued weather warnings for much of Ontario and Quebec for heavy snow, high winds and freezing rain.
The storm causes other flight cancellations and delays on Saturday at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport.