Thousands of customers in western Quebec still in the dark 

Almost all eastern Ontarians have their power back after last week's ice storm, but thousands of customers in western Quebec are still in the dark. 

As of 9 p.m. Sunday, there were still 6,286 Hydro-Québec customers in the Outaouais without power. 

Hydro One was reporting fewer than 100 outages in eastern Ontario, while Hydro Ottawa had zero reported outages.

Hundreds of thousands of Hydro Ottawa, Hydro One and Hydro-Québec customers were affected by Wednesday's freezing rain. 

Hydro-Québec crews continue to work throughout the long weekend to restore power to more than 130,000 customers across the province. Montreal, Montérégie, Laval and the Outaouais are the hardest hit regions. 

About 1.1 million Quebecers were without power at the peak of the outage Thursday morning, and more than 900,000 have had their power restored since. 

At a news conference Saturday, Hydro-Québec said it is hoping most customers will regain power by the end of the weekend, but couldn't give a precise timeline. 

Maxime Nadeau, the director of energy system control at Hydro-Québec, said teams have come in from other regions to lend a hand and private contractors were also hired. 

"We want to make sure we can restore things as quickly as possible," he said.

Power restorations, clean-ups continue

Hydro One said it restored power to more than 370,000 customers since the start of the storm Wednesday.

As power continues to be restored, crews are also cleaning up fallen trees, brush and limbs. 

Alain Gonthier, general manager for the City of Ottawa's public works department, said the city's forestry team has received more than 2,000 calls for service since Wednesday's ice storm, and has serviced more than half of them. 

Gonthier said collecting and chipping all the debris will be a multi-week effort, but people can help by placing their tree cutting and branches at the curb for collection.

Larger tree branches and cuttings can be brought to the city's Trail Road waste facility off Moodie Drive. 

Carbon monoxide risk 

City officials were also warning people about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. An Ottawa family of 11 are all recovery from various degrees of carbon monoxide poisoning after using a charcoal barbecue on the second floor of their row house for warmth. 

Fire crews have been carrying out wellness checks since the storm, and have found several residents using generators or barbecues inside garages and homes.

A 75-year-old man died in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Que., Friday after using a generator in his garage. The Deux-Montagnes police service said the level of carbon monoxide in the air was higher than normal. 

It's the second death linked to the storm in Quebec. On Thursday, a man in Les Coteaux died while attempting to cut down tree branches on his property, police said. 

A third man also died during the ice storm in eastern Ontario. Police said the 59-year-old man died after being struck by a falling tree branch on Wednesday.

This Quebec mayor says it's time to protect the grid from future storms

2 years ago

Duration 4:18

'We have lots of power, but we cannot distribute it,' said Georges Bourelle, the mayor of Beaconsfield, Que. Bourelle said Hydro-Québec needs to rethink its systems to be more reliable for when storms inevitably hit the province.