The vast majority of the approximately 670,000 Hydro Quebec customers who lost power due to last week’s winter storm have been able to locate it, but for those who stay, the weather is starting to get long.
Updated yesterday at 5:05pm.
At the end of the day on Tuesday, Hydro-Québec reported that 24,468 customers across the province were still immersed in darkness.
The Capitale-Nationale region remained the hardest hit, with around 8,500 customers without electricity, while the Portneuf and Jacques-Cartier sectors were particularly hard hit due to the fall of numerous trees and taking down various electrical installations, as reported by Le Soleil.
On December 23, at the height of the storm, more than 100,000 subscribers in the greater Quebec City area found themselves without lights and without heat.
A hundred hours later, the towns of Saint-Raymond and Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury were still reporting that a few thousand homes were plunged into darkness, particularly in the more rural areas. About 2,000 Quebec City residents also found no power.
In some cases, Hydro-Québec expects the network to be restored within the next few hours. But many victims will still have to be patient, while in many sectors the return to normal is only planned for Thursday or Friday.
The other most affected regions were Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (3,921 customers), Côte-Nord (3,721 customers), Mauricie (2,928 customers) and the Laurentians (2,070 customers).
There were also Bas-Saint-Laurent (1,021 customers), Outaouais (854 customers) and Montérégie (837 customers).
In a sign of the strength of the winds blowing across eastern Quebec, the Reford Gardens at Grand-Métis in Bas-Saint-Laurent reported that about a hundred trees, including century-old spruces, had fallen under gusts of 60 mph (99 km/h). during the New Year’s Eve storm.
On the Côte-Nord, where teams of Hydro-Québec fitters from across the territory came to hand, as many as 1,000 homes were able to find electricity Tuesday, according to Le Nord-Côtier, but 3,721 customers were still without electricity.
The Laurentians, five days later
In the Laurentians, 164 outages were recorded for a total of 2,070 customers still without power, mainly in the MRC of the same name, as well as those of Antoine-Labelle and Argenteuil.
Louis Robert was among the first to lose power at his Amherst chalet on the morning of December 23. “We couldn’t even get there because the trail couldn’t be cleared of snow because of the dangling wires. We went into a four wheel lane, we cleared out the freezer and left. Luckily the pipes didn’t freeze. »
In Montérégie, 837 Hydro-Québec customers had lost power four days after the winter storm began. The vast majority of the service disruptions are centered on the Brome-Missisquoi and Haute-Yamaska RCMs.
sea water in the bathroom
In Lac-Brome, in the Eastern Townships, Michel Gammon and his wife are able to use a house borrowed from a friend to warm up and shower, but the couple is growing impatient.
“I had to fetch water from a natural spring 10 km away for four days. Luckily we have a stove with enough wood, but at 65 it’s getting harder and harder to endure prolonged outages,” he explains.
In Mauricie, several sectors were also affected by power outages that had lasted several days, including 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 we fill our bath with water we draw from the lake,” testified Martine Gagné, who, like 43 of her neighbors, has been without electricity since December 23.
partial reconstruction
At this stage of the recovery process, Hydro-Québec primarily lists small outages affecting a small number of customers in more remote areas.
“There are still a few outages where we’re talking about a hundred customers, but over half are fewer than 10 customers and a good chunk of the latter are five customers or fewer,” a bouncer Tuesday told Hydro-Quebec, Cendrix Bouchard.
The work of the approximately 1,200 Hydro-Québec employees on duty is particularly lengthy and complex, as some of them have to travel to the affected areas with snowshoes and the necessary equipment.
“Sometimes master renewals and sometimes network conversions have to be carried out. It still takes several hours to work like this,” says Cendrix Bouchard.
Hydro-Québec claims that power will be restored to the vast majority of its customers as of Wednesday, December 28.
With the sun