Power restored to CityPlace buildings and surrounding area after 18 hours

Toronto Hydro says power has been restored to CityPlace buildings and the surrounding downtown area after an outage that lasted more than 18 hours.

The power outage, which began at about 7 p.m. Saturday night, affected nine condo towers in the area, and extended from Bathurst Street east to York Street, and from Front Street West south to Lake Shore Boulevard West.

About 9,000 to 11,000 people are estimated to live in the area. 

"We want to apologize to the residents in the Bathurst/York/Front/Lake Shore area," Toronto Hydro said in a statement on Sunday. It said crews had to replace more than 250 metres of underground cable. "We expect this work will provide more reliable power in the future."

Preventing future outages

It said power to the area is supplied by two feeders. "The cables that carry that power are old, thus, more susceptible to failure," the statement explained. 

"Over the past month, cable faults occurred on both feeders, causing several power outages in the area. Replacement work that had been scheduled became urgent last night when the main feeder was lost, and additional crews were brought in to conduct emergency repairs."

Toronto Hydro blamed the lengthy outage on the complexity of the work. It said its crews also had to test equipment before power could be restored. 

"To ensure a back-up power supply is maintained going forward, Toronto Hydro will also replace the back-up feeder. The work on back-up feeder will not require a power outage," it added.

'People are absolutely frustrated'

Earlier, Toronto Hydro spokesperson Jessica Martin acknowledged residents' frustration.

Gary Pieters, president of the CityPlace Residents Association, said the outage affected residences and businesses, and created health and safety problems.

Pieters said food spoiled in some units because fridges were not working, there were no lights in some hallways because emergency generators failed in some buildings, some elevators were not working and some residents who rely on electrically powered medical devices were unable to use them.

"People are absolutely frustrated," he said just before the outage ended.

"What Toronto Hydro needs to do is explain to people what happened, how it happened and what they have done, so that they can instill confidence in people who live this community that people will have a reliable power supply."

Alana Decoste, an employee at local restaurant Hunters Landing, says a lot of product was lost during the outage. The rest of the product was iced to save it. All the fridges in the restaurant were checked.

"Businesses here have lost revenue and product. It's a lot," she says. "It's pretty crazy."

It was the third outage this week, according to Toronto Hydro tweets. The other two occurred on Thursday and last Sunday.​