By Canadian Press

Thousands of Canadians still in the dark days after fierce storms knocked out power

Dec 27, 2022 | 10:32 AM

Utility crews in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick are still working to restore electricity to thousands of customers who have been in the dark for days after last week’s fierce winter storms knocked out their power.

As of Tuesday morning, power is still out for nearly 33,000 Hydro-Québec customers and more than 13,000 Hydro One customers.

New Brunswick Power has restored electricity to a majority of customers who were impacted by the storm, which it has said was one of the largest provincewide outage events of the last 25 years.

The utility’s outage map shows just 189 customers still affected by outages as of Tuesday morning.

Hydro-Québec says 87 per cent of customers have regained power since the extreme weather started on Friday.

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It says it has 1,300 field staff dedicated to restoring power today and teams from regions where the situation is under control will be mobilized in the hardest-hit areas.

Hydro-Québec CEO Sophie Brochu said Monday it was hard to provide a precise estimate for when power would be restored to the customers still without due to the complexity of the remaining jobs.

Brochu said that more snow and high winds on Monday had complicated access to the sites, many of which were set back from roads and could only be reached by crews on snowshoes or snowmobiles.

She said the “vast majority” of outages in the province would be resolved by Wednesday, but she couldn’t promise nobody would be in the dark by New Year’s Eve.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 27, 2022.

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

The Canadian Press