Ottawa City officials say it could take another two to three days to restore power, but Hydro Ottawa assures the community that progress is being made.
Hydro Ottawa reported that more than 74,000 people still had no electricity by 5 a.m. Tuesday, Crews has restored food to 106,000 customers in the past three days.
“Restoration efforts will continue 24 hours a day until all residents are reconnected,” Joseph Muglia of Hydro Ottawa said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Muglia reiterated that the amount of damage to Ottawa’s power grid was worse than the 1998 ice storm or the 2018 tornadoes.
“By comparison, 80 hydraulic poles will have to be replaced after the 2018 tornadoes. For this event, we have almost triple the damage to the poles. This level of infrastructure replacement would normally take about six months to complete. “We will do it in a matter of days,” he said.
Hydro Ottawa has temporarily removed its disruption map, saying it does not reflect the current situation and the full extent of the crew’s progress “due to the number of individual and complex disruptions overlapping.”
“Given the number of separate events and the extent of the damage to electrical equipment, this remains a multi-day restoration effort,” Hydro Ottawa said in a press release. “After critical institutions and emergency services, priority is given to restoring electricity to disruptions affecting large neighborhoods with the largest number of customers, followed by smaller areas.”
Muglia said that as soon as Hydro Ottawa is in a position to start offering estimated restoration times to individual neighborhoods, it will.
New Brunswick Hydro teams are on the ground helping Ottawa workers. Toronto and Kingston workers have also been called.
At 5:30 p.m., Hydro One reported about 49,000 customers in eastern Ontario were still without electricity. Hydro Quebec said there were still 21,000 customers in the Outaouais region to connect to.
TRANSPORT
About 40 roads are still impassable due to fallen trees and water lines, Public Works General Manager Alain Gonthier told reporters Tuesday afternoon. Neighbors are asked to stay off the roads if they can.
OC Transpo reports some buses diverted, but the traffic system is largely intact.
RESIDENCE ASSISTANCE
Breathing centers are open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily for people in need of electricity, water, food and housing. You can see a full list here. There are also landfills installed in various places for spoiled food, and the city is conducting a blitz of green bins to collect food waste. Many city services were closed on Tuesday.
SCHOOLS
Ottawa’s English public and Catholic schools will reopen on Wednesday if they have power. There are more than 60 schools in the city that do not yet have electricity and will remain closed. In addition, two schools were damaged by the storm and will remain closed for an extended period. French councils also plan to open schools that have power.
HYDRO ONE
Three large towers along Highway 417 were torn down during Saturday’s storm. The westbound exit at Hunt Club Road is closed and will remain so for the next few days. Hydro One, which supplies electricity to Ottawa and many parts of Ontario, is working to rebuild the nearly 50-meter-high water lines that carry power from Cornwall to the Ottawa Valley.
“This is the biggest extent of our damage to the transmission system. The bulk of the damage is to our distribution system, as well as other utilities in the province. Therefore, a very, very important effort to restore energy in right now, ”says Jason Fitzsimmons, Head of Corporate Affairs and Head of Customer Service at Hydro One. “It’s important to note that supply to Ottawa does not depend on this line at this time, but it is one of the 14 main lines to feed the city of Ottawa.”
At least nine people across Ontario were killed in a devastating storm Saturday, including three in the Ottawa area.
Mayor Jim Watson said Tuesday morning that the cost of cleaning will amount to millions of dollars, including the cost of bringing hundreds of employees over a long weekend, reimbursing their resources to other jurisdictions, and managing the centers. breathe.
“We don’t have an estimate right now,” he told CTV Morning Live on Tuesday. “But we’re not in the business of pinching pennies during an emergency like this. We have to make sure we get as many resources as possible to help people, because their lives have been turned upside down.”
A City Council meeting scheduled for Wednesday has been canceled.