Heavy snowfall from the day before, followed by frigid temperatures, left thousands without electricity across Quebec – with the majority of outages reported in the Montreal area around 7 a.m. on Friday.
As of 5:20 p.m., Hydro-Québec said 1,622 addresses were affected, with as many as 9,440 customers off the grid at around 12:30 p.m.
In Montreal, 1,204 addresses remained without power by late afternoon – with the outages in mainly on the West Island, particularly in the Dorval and Pointe-Claire areas.
“A switch tripped. It trips when there are voltage problems in order to protect the network,” explained Amélie Vaillancourt Chartrand, spokesperson for Hydro. “We apologize for the inconvenience, especially in this cold weather. Our teams are on the ground and working hard to restore service.”
Crews are on the ground, working to restore power.