Two people died and nearly a million people lost power Thursday night after an ice storm swept across eastern Canada, causing extensive property damage, particularly in Montreal.
The storm affected Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces in Canada. This is the biggest outage in Quebec’s power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.
Killed by falling trees
Authorities have recorded two deaths: an eastern Ontario resident killed by a falling tree on Wednesday, and a 60-year-old in Quebec fatally shot by a branch while trying to clear his yard Thursday.
“This is a difficult day for Montrealers, for the people of Quebec and parts of Ontario that are experiencing power outages,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on a trip to Montreal.
As of Thursday night, highway services were still hard at work clearing streets and highways littered with thousands of downed trees due to the weight of the ice, often by damaging power lines.
“Montreal is devastated” but the situation is “under control,” Quebec’s Economy and Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said during a news conference Thursday as freezing rain warnings were lifted.
Authorities urged caution, particularly warning against wooded areas and the population from approaching downed trees and power lines. In Montreal, Mount Royal, the hill that overlooks the city, has been closed.
a thick layer of ice
Many centers have opened to accommodate residents without power as temperatures near freezing and restoring power to everyone could take several days.
In total, nearly a million homes were still without power as of early Thursday, the vast majority of them in Quebec, though some lines had been restored.
Traffic lights, bicycles, cars, vegetation… in Montreal everything was covered by a thick layer of ice. 3 to 4 cm of freezing rain fell on the city in a few hours.
“In the last 20 years, it’s the worst ice storm we’ve ever had,” Jean-Marc Grondin told AFP. The 64-year-old retiree, who lives in the Plateau, a central district of the city, went out to see the electrical transformer that caught fire after a tree fell on Wednesday.
A few yards away, the city agents were busy, saws in hand. “It will take several weeks to clean up the entire city,” explains Samuel, a city agent who did not give his last name.
“Unfortunately we can think that with climate change there will be more and more events of this type in the coming years,” acknowledged François Legault, Prime Minister of Quebec.
Source: BFM TV
