Hydro Quebec making headway in aftermath of fierce autumn storm, but will need more time

Hydro-Quebec’s president said the number of clients without power will drop to less than 100,000 by late Sunday, with the remaining, more complex cases to take a few more days to fix as the utility deals with the aftermath of a powerful autumn storm that hit late last week.

Eric Martel, president of Hydro-Quebec, thanked Quebecers for their patience given that some had been without power for more than 48 hours since Friday, when rain and strong winds of 100 km/h struck the province.

Martel told reporters Sunday that significant progress had been made in bringing the number of clients without power from 990,000 at its peak on Friday afternoon down to 119,000 nearly 48 hours later.

“We’ll be under 100,000 by midnight,” Martel said. “We know there are clients where we will need Monday, Tuesday, but it’s clear we’ll be under 100,000.”

Crews were working around the clock but repair work was proving complicated in more remote areas not accessible by traditional equipment.

Of the remaining cases, Martel said about 70 per cent were cases where successful repair work would mean roughly 20 clients at a time would be hooked up to the grid again, slowing down that steady progress.

Spokesman Francis Labbe explained earlier Sunday those harder to reach areas had their own set of challenges.

“We’re getting close to places where the population is more isolated, so accessing the outages is more complicated, and sometimes the work we have to do before we even start to repair the line is major,” Labbe said. “For example, our crews often have to act as lumberjacks before they can even repair the line – lots of branches and trees are down.”

Martel said the remaining outages were mainly in the Monteregie area south of Montreal, the Eastern Townships area including the cities of Granby and Sherbrooke, the Laurentians and Lanaudiere region north of Montreal, and areas near Trois-Rivieres and Drummondville and the Beauce region south of Quebec City.

The utility said in some areas, entire segments of the system need to be rebuilt, while in others transformers and poles need to be replaced, with equipment being shipped from across the province. Repairing poles can take between five and seven hours.

The broken electrical poles and downed power lines are nothing compared to the province’s 1998 ice storm, which plunged 1.4 million clients into darkness for several weeks.

Martel had been questioned repeatedly about a comparison of the two incidents and said the situations were completely different, noting that with the ice storm, transmission towers collapsed from the weight of the ice.

“We’re in situation where we’re not talking about weeks to bring back electricity, we’re talking about hours and days because it’s the distribution system that’s affected – the poles and the lines that lead to homes,” Martel said.

The utility said nearly 1,400 employees were on the ground and reinforcements have arrived from Michigan, Ontario and the Maritimes with more reinforcements to come on Monday.

At an afternoon briefing, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonatan Julien said he was confident that 90 per cent of clients would be hooked up and preached patience as those remaining cases would require more time.

“It’s not less work, but the result is less convincing in terms of number of customers being reconnected,” Julien told reporters in Quebec City.

Julien also encouraged people to be safe and not use outdoor barbecues inside their homes after reports of several cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“I know after 48 hours, it’s getting to be long, but we’re asking people to be patient and please not to put your welfare in peril,” Julien said.

Friday’s storm claimed at least one life in Quebec.

Police in Bromont, Que., 85 kilometres east of Montreal, said a 63-year-old man was killed by a falling tree outside his home.