As of early Sunday evening, 1,514 Hydro-Québec customers were still without power in the region.
In the Témiscouata MRC, there were still more than 700 households without electricity. In Rivière-du-Loup, more than 300 customers were still waiting for the connection to be reconnected.
Also in the Kamouraska MRC, more than 400 households were still without power, while those in Rimouski-Neigette had power restored earlier.
Power has also been restored to the more than 2,000 households that lost power in the MRC of La Matapédia in the afternoon, the vast majority of them in Amqui.
At the peak of the outages, on Sunday morning, 12,680 Hydro-Québec customers were without power in Bas-Saint-Laurent, most of them in Rimouski.
The associated weather conditions
The state-owned company confirmed that the outages were linked to the strong winds that were blowing in the region, with gusts of up to 70 km/h.
Your spokesman Mathieu Côté points out that falling branches are often the cause of equipment failures. However, he adds that Hydro-Québec has carried out a lot of pruning work to control vegetation around the power lines.
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Vegetation near power lines can pose a potential hazard in the event of a fire or power outage.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Isabelle Damphousse
The state-owned company plans to complete work on the region’s power grid next year.
We carry out regular maintenance work. You should know that in Quebec we have over 110,000 km of power lines, so that’s a lot, but we invest a lot of time and money to control the vegetation under these lines, explains -he.
Mathieu Côté also confirmed that Hydro-Québec had prepared for the weather conditions announced by Environment Canada.
We had recalled several teams ready to respond throughout Eastern Quebec. They have been working since early morning to restore service to as many customers as quickly as possible, he says.
In collaboration with Gabriel Paré-Asatoory, Coralie Mensa and Isabelle Damphousse