Hundreds of thousands in Quebec, Ontario without power after ice storms hit

Hundreds of thousands of people were without electricity in Quebec and Ontario, Ottawa’s light-rail transit system went down, and parts of Manitoba were readying for another round of winter on Wednesday as snow, rain and ice storms swept central and eastern Canada ahead of Easter weekend.

Roughly 780,000 customers were without power in Quebec on Wednesday evening, according to Hydro-Québec’s website. The vast majority of those were concentrated in Montreal and in the Montérégie and Outaouais regions in the province’s southwest. The outages hit roughly 17 per cent of Hydro-Québec’s 4½ million customers.

“What’s causing the outages is the mixture of precipitation and wind,” Hydro-Québec spokesperson Gabrielle Leblanc said. “It weighs down the vegetation; there can be branches and trees that fall on the lines.’”

Pictures and videos of fallen branches, ice-covered vehicles and heavy icicles covering power lines and other infrastructure were ubiquitous on social media. The chaotic scenes reminded many people of the 1998 ice storm, during which millions of Quebeckers lost power at the peak of the crisis and at least 30 people died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide fumes and other storm-related causes.

In Ontario, more than 120,000 Hydro One customers were without power late Wednesday afternoon. The company, which is Ontario’s largest electricity transmission and distribution service provider, said crews were responding to outages in Ontario as quickly and safely as possible, but severe weather was slowing the response.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued warnings for freezing rain for parts of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on Wednesday. The agency said Toronto could receive up to 60 millimetres of rain, while thunderstorms around Niagara, Windsor and Hamilton in Ontario could bring nickel-sized hail and wind gusts near 90 kilometres an hour. Meanwhile, Environment Canada warned of storms in other parts of Ontario and southeast Manitoba, predicting a late season Colorado low could dump 15 to 25 centimetres of snow in Winnipeg, with winds reaching 70 kilometres an hour. It also called for a blizzard to hit Sanikiluaq, Nunavut.

The freezing rain shuttered Ottawa’s light-rail transit for the second time this year and city staff could not say when it would return to service. Five trains were still stuck on the tracks as of late Wednesday afternoon, after what OC Transpo initially described as a “power issue” on social media earlier in the day.

The last time a freezing rain storm shut down the light-rail system, in January, commuters were out of luck along a stretch of the east-west corridor for six days.

Ottawa’s general manager in charge of transit, Renée Amilcar, in an e-mailed update to councillors, said the city kept 13 trains running overnight in advance of the bad weather. Ten of those trains have winter carbons to reduce ice buildup on overhead lines. The storm, however, bested these precautions. Five vehicles were immobilized and four of the stopped trains lost power on Wednesday morning, Ms. Amilcar said, adding that all the trains were evacuated safely.

OC Transpo had said on Twitter Wednesday morning that no east-west train service was available and that replacement buses were in place to shuttle riders.

After the shutdown in January, city officials said short- and long-term plans were in place to mitigate the problem if it arose again. Those plans were to include using antifreeze and heating overhead cables in certain areas.

With a report from The Canadian Press