April 07, 2023 at 19:20 PM
Severe freezing rain and strong winds on April 5 caused disasters in Montreal, the second most populous city in Canada, and Ottawa, the capital.
[China News Agency]As the Easter holiday is approaching, severe freezing rain and strong winds on April 5 caused disasters in Canada’s second most populous city, Montreal, and the capital Ottawa. At one point, more than one million households lost power, and 2 people die.
Montreal and surrounding areas in southwestern Quebec were hit hard. Hydro-Québec said on the 6th that in the morning of the same day, freezing rain mixed with ice particles and strong winds caused power supply interruptions to about 1.1 million customers at peak times. About half of the outage customers are in Montreal.
Hydro-Québec has invested more than 1,100 people in emergency repairs. Hospitals, nursing homes, and telecommunications infrastructure are priority locations for emergency repairs. The company stated that it is difficult to provide a specific time for restoration of power supply, and because the damage is severe and the weather event has not completely ended, new power outages cannot be ruled out while rushing to repair. As midnight approached on the 6th, the hydropower company stated that the power supply of about 700,000 households still had to be restored. Its goal is to restore power to one-third of the affected users on the 7th.
The pictures of the TV media showed that in the city of Montreal, there were blocks of trees and utility poles that were broken and collapsed, causing damage to vehicles and houses below or next to them. Tree branches and roads are still icy.
