Canada _ (Commonwealth Union) _As of early Sunday evening, Hydro One reported more than 32,000 people without power in Ontario, down from 54,000 earlier in the day, while Hydro-Québec reported more than 83,000 customers remained without power.
In an afternoon update, Hydro-Québec CEO Sophie Brochu said the utility’s objective is to rejoin all who failed to win on Friday by Sunday night, but that’s not a certainty for everyone due to “tough decisions to work in.” People who lost electricity after Friday may have to wait longer. Several provinces predict bad weather and power interruptions to continue into the week. British Columbia issued a weather advisory early Sunday, anticipating snow and freezing rain in the province’s Southern Interior until Tuesday.
The massive snowfall in Saskatchewan subsided on Sunday, but Environment Canada warned that cold weather will linger through Boxing Day, with further snow expected on Tuesday and Wednesday. The environment agency’s website also included snow squall watches for numerous Ontario regions, with the majority in place for Monday and some lasting into Tuesday. Meanwhile, people in Fort Erie, Ont., and adjacent regions in the southern Niagara region awoke Sunday to the challenge of excavating out from the snow and evaluating storm damage.
“Yesterday was really a disaster,” Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop told CBC Headlines on Sunday, describing high winds that snapped utility poles and knocked trees into power lines and streets.
“It came to the point where, around midnight on Friday night, the gusts were so high [and] the snow was so deep that it was perilous for anyone to be out including employees trying to repair broken hydro lines.”
In the face of power outages and impassable roads, the Niagara area announced a state of emergency on Saturday evening; Chatham-Kent in southern Ontario also declared a state of emergency on Saturday after road conditions caused numerous collisions and left hundreds of people stranded.
