MONTREAL: More than a million Canadians were without electricity on Thursday as an ice storm lashed the east of the country, knocking over trees and damaging power lines, a utility provider in Canada claims.
Authorities in Quebec province warned that the ice buildup “was heavy enough in some spots to uproot entire trees” when they issued a freezing rain warning.
More than a million Hydro-Quebec customers were without electricity as of 12:30 am (0430 GMT Thursday), the corporation reported on its website, according to AFP.
According to a tweet from Hydro-Quebec, the ice’s weight forced trees and branches to break and come into contact with electrical wires, which was the main reason for the outages.
In Montreal, as city workers tried to clear roads of fallen branches and damaged cables, there were about 500,000 people without electricity.
Mayor Valerie Plante requested vigilance, and Montreal police reported receiving a “high volume of calls relating to the ice storm.”
In neighbouring Ontario province, more than 100,000 customers lost power, with “high winds, lightning strikes and the accretion of freezing rain” damaging equipment and felling trees, said electricity provider Hydro One.
