The strong winds that occurred during the night from Friday to Saturday caused some electrical poles to fall, plunging thousands of customers into darkness.
At 10:00 a.m., nearly 50,000 homes were still without electricity, mainly in Estrie, Montérégie, the Laurentians, Lanaudière and Outaouais.
In Berthierville, several Hydro-Québec equipment was damaged by gusts that exceeded 50 km/h.
A resident of the area also indicated to TVA Nouvelles that he had already informed Hydro-Québec, in the past, that certain poles had been leaning for about a year, but that nothing was done.
“When you see crooked posts and they’ve been crooked for a year… And there’s no one who takes care of them. I knew it! I was in bed this morning and when I saw what the current was like, I said to myself: the poles, those must be the two poles. And as a matter of fact, these are the two poles that I was thinking of,” he testified.
The poles to which this citizen refers, those which fell during the night, are ironically located opposite the Hydro-Québec station in Berthierville.
Teams from the state company were deployed to the affected areas Saturday morning to try to restore power as quickly as possible.
