Thousands of Quebecers still in the dark after powerful winter storm

In Quebec, thousands remain without power Monday after a major winter storm swept through the southern half of the province in time for the holidays.

Hydro-Québec reports that nearly 70,000 clients are still without electricity as of 10 a.m. on Boxing Day. The Quebec City, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Côte-Nord regions are among the most affected areas.

The goal is to restore power to the majority of households by end of Wednesday, the president of Hydro-Québec told reporters. Tricky weather on Christmas Day made for another difficult day.

“We are working really, really hard to get to the last customers,” Sophie Brochu said. “Today and tomorrow will be long.”

Crews are working to restore power but the majority of remaining outages affect a small number of people at a time — which is why it is taking long to fix, according to Hydro-Québec. Private companies are lending a hand to get the lights back on, too.

“It’s very difficult at this point of time to provide timing for restoration delays,” Brochu said. “It’s like a surgery, we still have at least 2,000 outages.”

Brochu also told Quebecers to stay safe and to reach out to municipal authorities if they need help. Don’t attempt to fix the outages yourself, she added.

“Refrain yourself from doing the work, refrain yourself from touching wires on the ground,” she said.

The messy cocktail of powerful winds, snow and ice left than 350,000 in the dark by late Friday afternoon. Aside from power outages, the winter storm closed schools, prompted road collisions and wreaked havoc on travel plans in the province.

After cancelling all Christmas Day trains on its Toronto-Ottawa and Toronto-Montreal routes, Via Rail tweeted Sunday evening that it was also cancelling all Boxing Day trains on the corridors due to the ongoing complications.

— With files from The Canadian Press

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Quebecers facing power outages and travel delays due to winter storm just ahead of Holidays

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