Thousands of Quebec Residents Still Without Power Following Harsh Winter Storm

Thousands of Quebec residents are still with power following the outage caused by the snowstorm that started late last week. Hydro-Québec customers in the region have been facing power outages and more than 550,000 clients lost power at one time or another since Thursday evening.

CEO of Hydro-Quebec, Sophie Brochu, shared that workers are busy trying to restore power for the clients. About 70,000 clients of the company were still without power on Monday morning. She added that more outages could take longer to resolve. At one time or another since Thursday evening, over 550,000 clients of Hydro-Québec lost power, according to Brochu. At the height of the storm, there were about 380,000 Quebec customers without electricity.

Furthermore, Via Rail tweeted that it was canceling all Boxing Day trains due to ongoing complications from the derailment of a train on Christmas eve. The company had to cancel all Christmas day trains throwing a wrench in a lot of travel plans. Delays have also been reported at Montreal’s Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport and at Jean-Lesage International Airport in Quebec City.

Last Friday, over 213,000 Quebec residents woke up without power because of the harsh winter storm. Along with power outages, nearly all schools in the Greater Montreal Area were closed. Several flights were canceled or delayed and officials issued a flash freeze warning as well. The storm hit some areas of Ontario and Quebec worse than others. However, travel advisories were issues in most regions.

The storm was said to only occur once every five or 10 years, according to Environment Canada meteorologist Mitch Meredith. “We may only see one of these storms every five or 10 years. I’ve only seen a couple of storms like this in the last 20 years,” she said.

Sophie Brochu is expected to share an update on the situation of power outages in Quebec today.

Vineet Washington