Orange Line Shutdown Extended As Locals Rename Flooded Station "Chutes De Square Victoria"

• The STM has informed passengers that the Orange line shut down in Montreal will now continue until past noon.
• No trains are running between Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM after flooding at Station Square-Victoria-OACI meant power needed to be cut.
• Some Montrealers are not happy, though others have taken the shutdown in stride by simply renaming the station "Les Chutes De Square Victoria."
• Visit MTLBlog for more headlines.

Montrealers have taken to renaming Station Square-Victoria-OACI to "Les Chutes De Square Victoria" after flooding in the station has caused an extensive shutdown of the STM Orange line in downtown Montreal. There's no question that Montreal's metro is somewhat like the nervous system of the city, and so when the metro shuts down, it sometimes feels a little bit like the city has shut down.

UPDATE: Service is now resuming on the orange line. Square Victoria station remains closed.

Which was certainly the case this morning, when an aqueduct burst and began gushing water into station Square-Victoria-OACI, causing a complete shut down of the Orange line between Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM stations.

This section of the Orange line serves two boroughs, moving a huge part of the core of Montreal's downtown commuters.

Luckily for us, we also have the parallel Green line, which was unaffected by the flooding, but still inevitably struggled to manage the huge surge in commuters that were rerouted as the Orange line continued to be shut down.

As it stands now, the burst pipe has been stopped and now all that is left to do is clear the water out of the station so that power can be turned back on. The STM is hoping to have this done by 3 p.m., but it is still likely that even after the Orange line resumes service, trains may not be stopping at Square-Victoria-OACI for some time.

Mayor Valérie Plante arrived around 10:45 to take stock of the mess at Square-Victoria-OACI station this morning, letting people know she would soon be making a statement about the situation.

She also let people know that there were now shuttles running between Berri-UQAM and Lionel-Groulx.

The STM updated passengers, above, letting them know that service would now resume closer to 3 p.m. instead of noon, as was initially stated.

Though Montrealers didn't seem concerned with the mayor's two cents... instead, they were providing their own hilarious commentary about the state of affairs in downtown Montreal this morning.

Word quickly spread throughout the city this morning that the metro was shut down due to flooding.

I wonder what it was like for people who were actually in Square-Victoria-OACI station early this morning when the water starting to pour in.

Many people have decided to find a positive side to this whole mess, calling the flooding a "new water feature," or a "zen fountain."

The sarcasm is real with these two.

But, at the end of the day, if you can't laugh about stuff like this, you'll never survive. 

Some other Montrealers suggested finding alternative modes of transport to help get around the flooded metro... like a kayak.

Or perhaps we should ditch the trains entirely, flood the whole metro and just adopt gondolas, like in Venice.

The tweet above reads, "I know that La Presse said that the metro was not super clean, but this timing for a big cleaning was really not ideal, STM."

Some people couldn't help but lump this fiasco in with the all-around ridiculous week we've been having in Montreal.

From a record early snowstorm to this all in four days, it's starting to feel like it's going to be a long winter...

And it's not even December yet.

Though, a lot of Montrealers were quick to come to the STM's defence, as many people on Twitter felt the need to hurl their insults and frustrations at the company, despite the fact that the burst pipe belongs to the city and, therefore, is entirely out of the STM's control.

The other important point to take in here is that water and electricity are not friends, and the STM was absolutely required to cut the power through the Orange line to keep passengers and employees safe.

At the end of the day, even with as many frustrated and late commuters as there were, most Montrealers are seemingly taking this shut down in stride. 

It doesn't take much to understand the STM is doing its best to mitigate this crisis and get back up and running as soon as possible.

UPDATE: Service is now resuming on the orange line. Square Victoria station remains closed.

So keep calm and take the Green line, Montreal.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a smoother commute... but if it's not, we'll be the first to let you know.