Some Hydro-Québec Outages Could Last Into The Easter Long Weekend — Here's What We Know
Only 1/3 of affected customers are expected to have their power back by Friday morning.
A Hydro-Québec vehicle.
Hydro-Québec is hoping to restore power to between 300,000 and 350,000 blacked-out clients by the end of the day on Thursday, April 6, representatives said in a press conference Thursday morning. For some unlucky clients, power issues could extend through Saturday, according to Régis Tellier, the vice-president of operations and maintenance at Hydro-Québec.
Earlier in the day, Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon stated that they expect only one-third of affected customers to have power back by Friday morning.
The primary challenges across the electric network are related to branches and trees falling and knocking out power lines, so Hydro-Québec officials reminded citizens to avoid touching downed lines or trees in order to avoid any harm.
At the time of writing, over 1,100,000 customers are in the dark, with food spoiling in fridges and heating knocked out thanks to the weather on Wednesday.
The sheer number of customers without power is causing difficulties for Hydro-Québec, and the freezing rain on Wednesday prevented the vast majority of restorative work due to black ice and dangerous driving conditions.
Hydro-Québec workers are focusing on fixing hotspots that affect large numbers of clients, which comprise around 25% of outages, according to Fitzgibbon.
As for the rest of the customers, nearly 2/3 are not expected to regain power by Friday morning, Hydro-Québec remains hopeful that they will have their power restored by the end of the Easter weekend, but officials are unsure of exactly when individual clients will have their electricity restored.
Checking info-pannes is still the best way to stay apprised of the current situation, as Hydro-Québec follows their predetermined priority list to restore hospitals and city infrastructure before prioritizing the outages that are affecting the most people.
