‘We're getting worse not better': 1 dead, hundreds without power after Quebec storm

Hydro Québec says 'employees are hard at work to restore service to customers'

Christine Jean-Baptiste
·Contributing Reporter
Updated ·4 min read
2
‘We're getting worse not better': 1 dead, hundreds without power after Quebec storm

A large part of Québec is still under ice, due to Wednesday’s ice storm.

Quebec provincial police have confirmed a death in connection with the storm. They said a falling branch killed a man in his 60s on Thursday morning.

Freezing rain, ice pellets and strong winds caused over 2,000 outages.

As of this morning, just over 1.1 million Hydro-Québec customers are without power —Half of them are in the Montreal area, where 30 to 35 mm of ice accumulated.

“Today, more than 1,110 employees are hard at work across Québec to restore service to customers as quickly as possible,” Hydro Québec wrote in a press release. “Temperatures have already begun to rise and should continue to do so, which means we expect to make good progress over the coming hours to restore service.”

Online, many Quebecers shared the storm’s impact.

Some blamed the city’s infrastructure.

Others believed it would be as bad as the ice storm in Quebec in 1998, where some regions gained 100 mm of freezing rain, and 1,393,000 citizens lost power.

According to Hydro Québec spokesperson Francis Labbé, as of this afternoon (2:00 pm E.T), around a million Quebecers are still without power.

“This ice storm left more ice than what we expected on the branches, and that explains why there are so many people left without power right now,” Labbé told Yahoo Canada.

The weight of the ice-coated trees eventually snapped and knocked down power lines. One reason for the service delay, Labbé explains, is due to all the detours the Hydro Quebec crew take to bypass collateral damage from the ice storm.

Among some frustration, some Quebecers are thanking emergency workers.