Power repairs continue in Quebec as officials warn of carbon monoxide

Article content

Hydro-Québec is warning that remaining repairs to some of the power lines damaged by last week’s ice storm may not be completed until Tuesday, and reminding people not to use fuel-burning appliances inside after several reports of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Article content

Montreal public health said Sunday that 180 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning had been reported in emergency rooms in the city since Wednesday, including more than 50 reported since Saturday.

“Just to put that in perspective, in a normal year, we get a couple of dozen. In a whole year. So this is way, way out of proportion,” Dr. David Kaiser, deputy medical director at Montreal public health, told CBC News.

On Friday, a 75-year-old man died after running his generator in his garage in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Que. There were two other deaths attributed to the storm, both caused by falling branches.

At its peak, the storm plunged 1.1 million Hydro-Québec customers into darkness. Power was restored to the vast majority of clients by the end of the weekend, but 38,570 customers remained without power across Quebec as of 9 am Monday. Montreal was the hardest-hit area, with 24,247 customers still in the dark.

Article content

Article content

The three other regions most affected Monday morning were the Outaouais, where 5,937 were without electricity at 9 am; the Montérégie, with 5,216; and Laval, with 3,046.

Régis Tellier, Hydro-Québec’s vice-president of operations and maintenance, told reporters Sunday morning that power had been restored to over 90 per cent of customers who lost electricity. The utility met its target of restoring power to at least 95 per cent of affected customers as of Sunday evening.

Most of the remaining outages affect only a handful of customers, meaning a few are being reconnected despite 1,600 hydro workers operating at the same pace.

Article content

Asked Monday on Twitter why the utility doesn’t have more people working to restore power, Hydro-Québec responded that more staff wouldn’t speed up the process, but would rather create logistical problems and slow down operations.

“We are getting help from contractors, including vegetation control teams that are essential right now as most of the damage is to the trees contacting our grid,” Hydro tweeted. “We have few major repairs to do on our grid, but a lot of trees to remove from the way or from the lines.”

On Monday morning, the utility reminded customers that if there is damage to their entrance mast — which feeds power directly to homes from hydro lines — they must have it repaired by a certified electrician before Hydro-Québec teams can restore power.

Article content

Hydro-Québec representatives would not comment Sunday on whether customers who have been without power for days will be compensated.
The utility also took to Twitter on the weekend to address “a large number of comments” from people in the West Island who felt “forgotten or left out of the outage restoration efforts.”

“We want to reassure you that we are working on restoring service everywhere, including the West Island,” Hydro-Québec tweeted. “We are sorry if you are still without power. We understand that, after such a long time, you might feel like you’ve been left out or forgotten, but we can assure you that this is not the case. The West Island was a particularly hard hit by the ice storm outages. One of the main reasons is the large number of mature trees in the sector that have had branches break and fall on the power lines. Also, access to the grid was initially a bit more difficult in that area with a lot of power lines passing behind homes.”

It noted that at the peak of the outage, nearly 500,000 West Island customers were in the dark and that by Saturday afternoon, there were just under 140,000.

“We have restored power to around 71 per cent of affected customers in the West Island while the average for all of Montreal is 72 per cent,” the utility wrote Saturday. “We will keep working until every customer gets their power back, on the West Island and everywhere else. Thank you for your patience.”