Toronto Hydro says it is working to restore power to a large swath of the downtown core following a widespread outage on Tuesday.
It is unclear exactly how many customers are currently impacted but the outage appears to be affecting homes and businesses between University Avenue and Yonge Street, south of Dundas Street.
Toronto police confirmed that the outage is impacting numerous traffic lights and those intersections should be treated as four-way stops.
Electronic billboards outside the Eaton Centre were also blank at around noon on Tuesday.
While officials could not confirm the cause of the outage, Hydro One said fire crews are currently onsite at the Terauley Transmission Station, located near Bay and Dundas streets.
“We sincerely apologize for the disruption as we understand how difficult it is to be without power,” Toronto Hydro said in a post on social media.
Eaton Centre, TMU impacted
Toronto Metropolitan University said the power outage is impacting some areas of the downtown campus and students in some buildings, including RAC, JOR, POD, LIB, TRS, SLC, YNG, and YDI, should evacuate immediately.
“Evacuation is required because a utilities failure of this nature may compromise the building’s life-safety systems (i.e. fire-detection and sprinkler systems),” an email from the university read.
“For your safety, please avoid these areas of campus.”
All classes, labs or exams being held in these buildings will be paused until power is restored, the email continued.
Employees who work in those buildings have been told to “find an alternate place to work or take a break nearby until the power failure has been resolved.”
“Employees who provide essential services on campus should check with their leaders for further instructions,” the email read.
In a statement to CTV News Toronto, Toronto Hydro called the outage “an evolving situation.”
“…we don’t yet have a confirmed estimated time of restoration. However, we’ve been able to work with Hydro One to restore some customers,” the statement read.