hundreds of thousands of homes still without electricity in the east of the country

The ice storm hit Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces in Canada, on Wednesday, causing the death of at least two people and extensive material damage. Two days after its passage, 630,000 Quebec homes were still without electricity, Friday, April 7 in the morning.

While more than a million homes were without power at the height of the event, “We have restored power to just over a third of the people affected by the blackouts caused by the ice storm”announced the electricity supplier Hydro-Quebec.

If the company estimated that it would be able to restore power to the majority of customers by midnight, “we know that for some customers it will last until Sunday, potentially Monday”, however, said Régis Tellier, spokesperson for Hydro-Québec. Of the “more favorable weather conditions” throughout the day should allow “accelerate the restoration of service”he added.

About half of the outages concern the city of Montreal

By then, the city of Montreal, which lists about half of the breakdowns, has opened six temporary emergency accommodation centers, where residents without electricity have spent the night. These centers remained accessible during the day to those wishing to warm up on the first day of the long Easter weekend.

“We are very satisfied with the management of the crisis by Hydro-Québec”for his part greeted the Quebec Minister of Economy and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, during a press briefing.

This is the biggest outage on Quebec’s power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.

Since the start of the storm, two people have died: a resident of eastern Ontario, killed by a falling tree on Wednesday, and a 60-something in Quebec, fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his garden. , THURSDAY.

On Friday, hundreds of Montreal employees were still deployed in the field, for example in parks, where many branches were strewn on the ground after collapsing under the weight of the ice.

At a temperature of around 1°C, the ice has melted, but gusts of wind are shaking the trees, with the risk of new branches falling. Authorities are still advising people not to approach power lines.