Quebec wind storm
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Three days after devastating wind storms battered much of the province's power grid network and left nearly one million customers without electricity, Hydro-Québec reported on Monday that power has been restored to 94 per cent of its clientele.

"And 1,400 workers are on the ground to reconnect those 56,000 clients still without service," the utility announced on its Twitter account. "Our teams will continue to work until all Quebecers are reconnected."

As of 7 a.m. Monday, 56,781 customers remained in the dark, most of them in the Eastern Townships, the Montérégie and Chaudière-Appalaches regions and the Laurentians.

On Sunday, Hydro-Québec president Eric Martel warned that some areas would not be back on the grid before Tuesday or even Wednesday.

Martel said 70 per cent of the outages that had yet to be repaired affected no more than 20 clients each. He said power would be cut to some customers to allow repair crews to safely carry out their tasks.

The regions that remained without power Monday were those where high winds caused extensive damage to trees, which in turn fell on power lines. Repair crews in those areas prioritized the parts of the grid serving hospitals or water treatment plants.

About 50 schools remained closed on Monday because of the outages.



All of Hydro-Québec's repair crews were deployed during weekend, and were reinforced by colleagues from the city of Detroit in Michigan, Ottawa and New Brunswick.

At the height of the blackouts, a total of 990,000 homes and businesses were hit with power outages, leading Quebec Premier François Legault to compare the crisis to the ice storm of 1998 that paralyzed the province for weeks.

Hydro-Québec spokesperson Cendrix Bouchard acknowledged that if judged only by the number of people affected — 1.5 million clients were without power in 1998 — the two events might seem similar.

"But there the comparison ends because in 1998, it was our transport and transmission network that collapsed, with steel pylons giving way under the weight of the ice.

"This time it was our distribution system, based on wooden poles near residences, that was affected."

Bouchard said winds on Friday sent broken branches colliding into the network at 2,500 sites, causing the massive blackouts.

Quebec Energy Minister Jonatan Julien reminded citizens to avoid fallen power lines and not try to do any repairs on their own.

PRESSE CANADIENNE & MONTREAL GAZETTE