Hydro-Quebec claims the vast majority of its customers who have been without power since the storm passed last Friday will have power restored by Wednesday.
Posted 6:50am Updated 2:42pm
However, Julie Sbeghen, Hydro-Quebec’s senior director of operations and maintenance for Centre-du-Quebec, as of Monday could not provide an exact end date for all of the outages. Those that remain more complex or more remote after Wednesday will be “surgically performed,” she said.
Large trees have fallen on roads and some remote locations are only accessible by snowmobile and snowshoes.
The balance, which stood on Sunday morning with 130,000 customers without electricity, fell to 26,099 or 1,471 different failures on Tuesday around 2:16 p.m.
The president and CEO of the state-owned company, Sophie Brochu, urged the population to wait for the arrival of the Hydro-Québec teams: “You can have the irrepressible desire to get your hands dirty. Please don’t touch the trees, don’t touch the wires, it’s for your safety. »
Space heaters that use fuel can also be very dangerous when used indoors as they cause suffocation and poisoning hazards.
Ms. Brochu also recalled that several municipalities had opened emergency centers to help affected citizens.
Ms Sbeghen said the arrival of milder weather will help Hydro-Québec’s roughly 1,200 employees recover from the situation more quickly.
At the height of the storm, nearly 380,000 Quebec customers lost access to electricity. According to Hydro-Québec, more than 670,000 subscribers have been affected at times since Thursday evening.
The Capitale-Nationale badly affected
As of Tuesday morning, the Capitale-Nationale region, hardest hit by power outages, was still without power, with 9,087 Hydro-Québec subscribers.
The other most affected regions were Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (4,466 customers), Côte-Nord (4,212 customers), Laurentides (2,798 customers) and Mauricie (2,452 customers).
There were also Bas-Saint-Laurent (1,073 customers), Outaouais (608 customers) and Montérégie (470 customers).
Teams are also being moved from one region to another to ensure the hardest hit areas have the requisite number of teams on site for the scale of work to be carried out.
traffic disruptions
Quebecers traveling during the holiday season should also note that some disruptions to various modes of transportation are still in effect.
Environment Canada’s weather warnings were lifted Tuesday morning, but snow still lay on some roads.
On Tuesday morning, Transports Quebec reiterated that users traveling in electric vehicles between Quebec and Saguenay will be denied access to charging stations at the Laurentides Game Reserve in l’Étape for an indefinite period. Drivers are advised to download the Québec 511 application to stay informed of current events on the road network.
Several flights scheduled to depart Monday were delayed or canceled at Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport, but most planes were also able to exit the tarmac. At Jean-Lesage International Airport in Quebec City, one of the regions hardest hit by the storm, more than a third of departures were delayed or canceled.
Rail operator VIA Rail has canceled all Christmas Day and Christmas Day services between Toronto and Montreal and between Toronto and Ottawa due to the aftermath of a Canadian National (CN) train derailment on Christmas Eve. Those lines will reopen Tuesday on a modified schedule, the company announced on Twitter.
Severe winter conditions paralyzed nine VIA Rail trains overnight from Friday to Saturday, leaving passengers in some cases without food or water for more than 12 hours. On Saturday afternoon, Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra described the situation at VIA Rail as unacceptable.