A tree that fell on a car is shown following an ice storm in Montreal on April 6.Graham Hughes
One man was killed while clearing a downed tree and hundreds of thousands are expected to be without power heading into the Easter weekend after a dangerous ice storm swept across parts of Quebec and Ontario this week.
“We are deploying all we can in human, financial and technical resources to reconnect you as quickly as possible,” said Hydro-Québec chief executive officer Sophie Brochu during a news conference on Thursday.
At the peak of the outages on Thursday morning, more than 1.1 million customers were without electricity. Montreal was by far the most affected region, with nearly half a million customers affected by the widespread outage. Hundreds of thousands were also without power in the Montérégie, Outaouais and Laurentides regions, and the city of Laval.
Roughly 120,000 Hydro One and 65,000 Hydro Ottawa customers were also affected in Ontario, the utilities reported.
Régis Tellier, Hydro-Québec’s vice-president of operations and maintenance, said 70 to 80 per cent of those affected should have their power restored by the end of Friday.
Premier François Legault called on Quebeckers to be patient and to check on those they know who live alone. “We’ll go through this together,” he said at a news conference.
Ice storm in Maritimes causes outages and school closures
Provincial police spokesperson Audrey-Anne Bilodeau said a man in his sixties was killed after he was struck by a branch he was trying to saw off a tree damaged during the storm in Les Coteaux, Que., about 70 kilometres southwest of Montreal. She said no other major incident was reported in the aftermath of the storm.
Hydro-Québec said more than 1,100 workers were in the field working to restore power, giving priority to health care facilities and other critical infrastructure before moving on to outages affecting the highest numbers of customers.
Power outages forced Montreal’s Fleury Hospital to cancel non-emergency surgeries and other procedures on Thursday. Numerous clinics and other facilities throughout the region were closed or had limited services.
In Montreal, several streets were blocked by large fallen branches and people lined up at coffee shops where only cash was accepted, as the lack of electricity made debit machines useless.
Large green spaces such as Laurier Park looked like crystallized battlefields, with virtually every tree sustaining heavy damage, their limbs still wrapped in melting ice Thursday morning. Heavy icicles covered power lines and balconies. Many distressed or amused Montrealers stopped to post images of the scenes on social media.
Jonathan Wasserman was planning to celebrate the first night of Passover on Wednesday with his family in their Montreal home when the power went out. They moved to a relative’s house, who also lost power after the table was set, Mr. Wasserman said, forcing them to eat by candlelight.
Thursday morning, he got coffee at a Tim Hortons, the only open restaurant he could find. Around 60 people were pouring out the door and about 50 cars lined the drive-through, Mr. Wasserman said. “Everyone was very well behaved, given that people were kind of cold and a bit grump.”
City of Montreal spokesperson Philippe Sabourin said more than 300 trees were felled across the city, but there were no reports of injuries related to the storm on the island.
Simon Legault, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the region received between 30 and 35 millimetres of freezing rain Wednesday, along with wind gusts of 50 to 60 kilometres an hour, which caused most of the damage when branches fell onto power lines and cars.
While many drew comparisons with the 1998 ice storm that left millions without power and caused dozens of deaths in Quebec, Mr. Legault pointed out that, in that instance, close to 100 millimetres of freezing rain fell over several days. “It’s really a bad situation, but not nearly as bad as 1998.”
The storm underscored the importance of adapting Hydro-Québec’s infrastructure to climate change, Ms. Brochu said, but a 2022 study by Ouranos, a climate change research organization, suggests that the frequency of freezing rain events will actually decrease in Montreal as the planet warms.
Researcher and study co-author Christopher McCray said in an interview that it is nonetheless a good idea to make the power grid more resilient as other extreme weather events are projected to increase in intensity and frequency.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assessed the damage in his Montreal riding with Mayor Valérie Plante on Thursday afternoon, and said the federal government was ready to offer any help needed.
Ms. Plante said people seeking WiFi or warmth could go to Montreal libraries and community centres, some of which would be open for people to take a hot shower or spend the night if their homes remain without power.