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Power outages after Wednesday’s freezing rain closed several schools, affected drinking water in Gatineau and left tens of thousands of customers in the dark Thursday morning.
A precautionary boil water advisory is in place for about 77,000 residents in part of the Gatineau sector after a treatment plant briefly lost power. The advisory had ended for parts of Hull.
Gatineau is opening the Centre sportif Robert-Rochon on rue de l’Aréna for people to charge devices, shower and get water until 10 p.m.
People can also access power and water at the Bernard-Lonergan library and Centre communautaire et culturel de Buckingham, and can shower at the Centre sportif de Gatineau or Centre aquatique Paul-Pelletier.
Cantley’s Centre communautaire multifonctionnel on chemin des Étoiles is also open for people whose homes have lost power, said Mayor Nathalie Bélisle.
As of late Thursday afternoon, fewer than 2,000 Hydro-Québec customers in the Outaouais had lost power, mostly in and around Gatineau and around Kazabazua. That’s down from about 30,000 earlier Thursday morning.
Hydro-Québec told Radio-Canada that residents of the municipalities of Mansfield-et-Pontefract, Île-du-Grand-Calumet, and Otter Lake will have to wait until Friday for power to be restored.
WATCH | How the storm looked Wednesday:
Dozens of flights cancelled and delayed despite storm not hitting as hard as expected
Ottawa received mostly rain on Wednesday despite a freezing rain warning. The situation was a bit worse in the Ottawa Valley with schools closed. Natalia Goodwin breaks it all down.
An orange-level freezing rain warning covered the Ottawa-Gatineau area Wednesday, with about 23 millimetres of mixed precipitation at the Ottawa International Airport and about 27 millimetres in Maniwaki.
All western Quebec schools were closed Wednesday.
More on the closures
All Centre de services scolaire des Draveurs facilities are closed Thursday.
The Centre de services scolaire au Cœur-des-Vallées closures include écoles Grands-Pins, Hormisdas-Gamelin, Monseigneur Charbonneau, Quatre-Vents, Sacré-Cœur and Saint-Michel.
The Hauts-Bois-de-l’Outaouais school service centre has closed its pavilion Sainte-Marie in Otter Lake and the Western Québec School Board has closed the Buckingham Elementary School.
Outages are also closing some facilities for local health agency CISSSO, including the Cantley, Otter Lake and Vallée-de-la Lièvre community service centres (CLSCs).
Gatineau’s Centre de services de Masson-Angers and Centre aquatique Lucien-Houle are closed.
The Camp Fortune ski resort closed again Thursday, citing a lack of power.