Quebec power outages likely continue until Monday amid carbon monoxide concerns
Hydro-Québec crews have been working throughout the long weekend to restore power to more than 130,000 customers — the majority in Montreal — still without power following Wednesday's ice storm.
The lights went off for more than a million people and the storm has been linked to two deaths.
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More than 900,000 customers have had their power restored, from the peak of 1.1 million on Thursday morning.
At a news conference Saturday, Hydro-Québec said it is hoping most households will regain power by the end of the weekend, but couldn't give a precise timeline. Some may stay without power until Monday as about 1,500 workers are on the ground working to restore power lines.
Freezing rain alerts were issued by Environment Canada for several regions in southwestern Quebec, but Montreal, Laval, Laurentians, Outaouais, Lanaudière and Montérégie are expected to be the most affected (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada).
Maxime Nadeau, the director of energy system control at Hydro-Québec, said Montreal is now the top priority and teams have come in from other regions to lend a hand. Private contractors were also hired.
"We want to make sure we can restore things as quickly as possible," he said.
"The bulk part of our distribution system has been restored, so now we are doing some work on outages with a smaller amount of customers attached to them. When we restore an outage, fewer customers regain power, so the rhythm of restoration will be slower."
He said some power lines are more damaged than others and may take longer to repair, meaning some people will have to stay in the dark throughout the Easter weekend. Most outages were caused by felled trees, he said.
"We hope to have restored a million customers by tomorrow, which would leave 100,000 to 150,000 customers without electricity," he said.
In Montreal, more than 87,000 customers were still without power Saturday. Thousands of customers in the Lanaudière, Laval, Laurentians, Montérégie and Outaouais regions are also still waiting for power.
WATCH: Freezing rain leaves over 1 million in the dark across southwestern Quebec
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Intermittent power outages
Nadeau said the outages shouldn't last longer than a few more days. It's also possible for some households to regain power and lose it again temporarily.
Pierre Fitzgibbon, minister of economy, innovation and energy, said that on the bright side, the outages were not caused by Hydro-Québec equipment failures.
"The situation we were in could happen again; we must solidify what we have right now," he said.
He also called on Quebecers to be careful with using gas-powered appliances indoors after one man died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
"We have to be careful. One death is one death too much," he said.
A Montreal public health official said Saturday that 135 people in the city have been treated for carbon monoxide poisoning since Wednesday.
"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," said Dr. David Kaiser, deputy medical director at Montreal public health.
He said the cases are primarily related to people using barbecues or camping stoves indoors to do heating or cooking,as well as generators being too close to homes or near air inlets.
"Carbon monoxide is a gas: it doesn't smell, it doesn't taste, you can't see it," Kaiser said. "It's produced whenever something's burned."
He said the varied symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning can make it difficult to detect, but urged people in Montreal who are checking in on loved ones in hard-hit areas to watch for headaches, nausea, fatigue and, in serious cases, loss of consciousness.
Montreal's public security workers have also been going door to door in areas still without power and making more carbon monoxide-related calls to ensure everyone is safe.
A 75-year-old man died in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Que., Friday after using a generator in his garage. The Deux-Montagnes police service said the level of carbon monoxide in the air was higher than normal.
It's the second death linked to the storm in Quebec. On Thursday, a man in Les Coteaux died while attempting to cut down tree branches on his property.
Grocery stores open Easter Sunday in affected regions
Temporary shelters where people can warm up and charge their devices will stay open this weekend.
The Quebec government announced that some grocery stores will be open on Sunday, despite the Easter holiday, in most of the affected regions to ensure food security for the population in exceptional circumstances.
Fitzgibbon said grocery stores can reopen in Montreal, Laval, Lanaudière, the Montérégie, the Outoutais, and the Lower Laurentians.
The stores can be open between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., but store hours will vary according to the company.
But some other businesses — like one flower shop in Pointe-Claire in Montreal's West Island — stand to lose a lot of money because of the power outages.
A tree fell onto a car in Montreal's Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough. Environment Canada says the metropolitan area is experiencing wind gusts of about 60 km/h (Yannick Gadbois).
Fig Fleurs has been without electricity since Wednesday. It just received a huge shipment for Easter.
"Everything will have to be thrown out because we have no way of, you know, refrigerating flowers," said co-owner Marie Vallée.
"It's a tragedy and it's a huge loss for us."
Vallée says she and her partner have been trying to get clients in, but it hasn't been easy given there's no one around on the normally bustling shopping strip in the Pointe-Claire village.
"I mean, we can hang on to things for a few days, but if we don't get any power, it's serious," she said.
More than 3,100 Hydro-Québec customers in Pointe-Claire are without power. Dollard-Des Ormeaux and Pierrefonds are the hardest-hit regions in the West Island, with more than 6,900 and 6,100 clients in the dark, respectively.
__Vehicle ticketing has resumed __
On Friday, city of Montreal spokesperson Philippe Sabourin said most major roads have been cleared, though fallen branches still littered some city streets on Saturday.
The city issued a statement saying it would not issue tickets until Saturday morning for cars parked in areas with spring cleaning restrictions and reserved parking restrictions.
"If tickets have been issued in these cases, the sustainable mobility agency will take the necessary steps required in order to cancel them," a Friday statement read.
Sabourin also urged people to stay out of parks, which are closed, as they are still being cleaned up. He said it will take days to pick up all fallen branches.
Heavy ice — in some cases up to 25 millimetres of it, according to Environment Canada — sent branches crashing onto power lines, streets and cars on Wednesday.
Thumbnail courtesy of P-O et Marilyne Pierre-Olivier, taken in Saint-Lambert, Que.
This article, written by Sabrina Jonas, was originally published by CBC News on April 8, 2023. It contains files from CBC's Rowan Kennedy, The Canadian Press and Radio-Canada.
