More than a million people were without power in eastern Canada Wednesday night as a storm damaged power lines, authorities said.
The province of Quebec was under rain and ice warnings issued by the environment ministry, with authorities warning Wednesday that “an accumulation of ice could break tree branches.”
More than 945,000 Hydro-Quebec customers lost power around 01:00 GMT (02:00 this Thursday in Lisbon), out of a total of 4.5 million.
“The outages are mainly due to falling branches or trees sagging under the weight of the ice,” according to the electricity provider’s website.
Nearly half of them (440,000) are in Montreal, where several city crews are clearing roads damaged by downed trees and downed power lines.
Police were receiving a “high volume of ice storm-related calls” while Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante urged caution and vigilance.
In the neighboring province of Ontario, more than 112,000 customers also lost power due to a winter storm that “downed trees and branches on power lines,” according to electricity provider Hydro One.
In the Canadian capital, Ottawa, however, the alerts went off at night.
Source: TSF
