Hundreds of thousands of homes in Quebec were still without power on Friday, April 7, two days after an ice storm swept through eastern Canada, killing three people and causing extensive property damage, mostly in Montreal.

“We’ve restored power to just over a third of the people affected by outages due to the ice storm‘ announced power utility Hydro-Quebec. About 630,000 homes remained blacked out as of Friday morning, up from 1.1 million at the peak of the event. “We are very satisfied with Hydro-Québec’s crisis management” welcomed Quebec Minister of Economy and Energy Pierre Fitzgibbon during a press conference late Friday morning.

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The company estimated the majority of customers could have power back by midnight on Friday. “We know that for some customers it will take until Sunday, possibly Mondaysaid Régis Tellier, spokesman for Hydro-Québec. Of “more favorable weather conditions“it should be possible all day long”Accelerate service recovery“, he added.

By then, the city of Montreal, which accounted for about half of the breakdowns, had opened six makeshift shelters where residents stayed without power. These centers remained open during the day for those wishing to warm up on the first day of the long Easter weekend.

Three dead

Since the storm began in Canada, authorities have recorded three fatalities: an eastern Ontario resident was killed by a falling tree on Wednesday, a 60-year-old in Quebec was fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his yard Thursday, and a man , who used his grill at his home about forty kilometers from Montreal. Hundreds of Montreal workers were still on the ground Friday, including in parks where many tree branches were scattered on the ground after collapsing under the weight of the ice.

At a temperature of around 1°C, the ice had melted, but gusts of wind shook the trees and there was a risk of more branches falling. The authorities always advised the population not to go near the power lines. The storm hit Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s two most populous provinces. This is the largest outage in Quebec’s power grid since the 1998 ice storm that left the province in chaos for several weeks.