About 130,000 Hydro-Quebec subscribers were still without electricity Tuesday morning, more than two days after a violent storm passed through Ontario and Quebec.
This represents just over 20% of the 550,000 customers without electricity at the height of the storms on Saturday. As a result, Hydro-Quebec failed to reach its target, which was to reconnect with eight out of ten customers on Tuesday morning.
The Laurentian region remains most affected in Quebec. More than 71,000 of its residents still do not have access to electricity.
Hydro-Québec spokeswoman Caroline Desrosiers explains this situation through a large number of small damage affecting each of them a small number of customers. He added that Hydro-Québec technicians also face difficulties in accessing some sectors located behind the lot.
Today and unfortunately perhaps tomorrow as well, the smallest loss will continue to affect the networksaid the speaker.
The Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Jonatan Julien agrees.
We quickly restored power to large breakdowns that covered multiple customers at once even though the work was very heavy., he explains. Currently, however, technicians are working on the breakdowns which is less complicated to achieve but affects fewer people, so the latest percentages are hard to come bysaid the minister.
He said, however, that the number of outages should be less than 100,000 by Tuesday at noon. He added that a large majority subscribers should be able to reconnect on Tuesday night, i.e., up to 95% of them.
700 teams of at least two technicians are currently working in the province to try to restore power to the entire network.
Hydro-Québec employees rely on the support of private contractors and workers from New Brunswick.
Source: Radio-Canada
