The vast majority of some 670,000 Hydro-Quebec customers who lost power due to last week’s winter storm have been able to find it, but for those remaining the time is starting to get long.
At the end of the day, Tuesday Hydro-Quebec reported 24,468 customers still plunged into darkness, across the province.
The Capitale-Nationale region remained the most affected, with approximately 8,500 customers without power, while the Portneuf and Jacques-Cartier sectors were particularly affected due to the fall of numerous trees, taking with them various electrical installations, according to what was reported The sun.
The other regions most affected were Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (3,921 customers), the Laurentians (2,070 customers) and Mauricie (2,928 customers).
Added to this were Bas-Saint-Laurent (1,021 customers), Outaouais (854 customers) and Montérégie (837 customers).
A sign of the strength of the winds that blew over eastern Quebec, the Reford Gardens, in Rimouski, reported about a hundred trees, including century-old spruce trees, fallen under gusts of 99 km/ h during the New Year’s Eve storm.
On the North Shore, where teams of Hydro-Québec fitters came to lend a hand from all over the territory, no less than 1,000 households were able to find power on Tuesday, according to The North Coastbut 3,721 customers were still without electricity.
The Laurentians, five days later
In the Laurentians, some 164 outages were listed for a total of 2,070 customers still without electricity, mainly in the RCMs of the same name and in those of Antoine-Labelle and Argenteuil.
Louis Robert was among the first to have lost power, on the morning of December 23, at his chalet in Amherst. “We couldn’t even get there because the path couldn’t be cleared of snow because of the dangling wires. We walked in a track of four wheels, we cleaned out the freezer and we left. Fortunately, the pipes did not freeze. »
In Montérégie, 837 Hydro-Québec customers had not found electricity, four days after the start of the winter storm. The vast majority of service interruptions are concentrated in the RCMs of Brome-Missisquoi and Haute-Yamaska.
Lake water in the bath
In Lac-Brome, in the Eastern Townships, Michel Gammon and his spouse can take advantage of a house lent by a friend to warm up and go take their showers, but the couple is starting to get impatient.
“I have had to fetch water from a natural spring 10 km away for four days. Fortunately, we have a stove with enough wood, but at 65, it is more and more difficult to have to endure prolonged breakdowns,” he explains.
In Mauricie, several sectors were also affected by blackouts that had lasted for several days, including in Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc where the community center was open to welcome residents of the sector who needed to warm up or charge electronic devices.
“We are lucky because we have a home. Water management remains a challenge: we get our drinking water from our families in Shawinigan and fill our water bath with water that we draw from the lake,” testified Martine Gagné, deprived of electricity. like 43 of its neighbours, since December 23.
Partial reconstruction
At this stage of the restoration operation, Hydro-Québec is mainly listing small outages affecting a small number of customers in more remote areas.
“There are still a few outages or we are going to talk about a hundred customers, but beyond half affect less than 10 customers or less and a good part of the latter, 5 customers or less”, indicated Tuesday a Hydro-Québec spokesperson, Cendrix Bouchard.
The work of some 1,200 Hydro-Québec employees deployed in the field is made particularly long and complex by the fact that they sometimes have to go to the affected areas on snowshoes, carrying the necessary equipment.
“In some cases, pole replacements that have to be carried out and sometimes partial network reconstruction. It still takes several hours, work like that,” says Cendrix Bouchard.
Hydro-Québec maintains that the vast majority of its customers will be able to regain power as of Wednesday, December 28.