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 12:30 p.m., just under 30,000 homes were still without electricity, mainly in Estrie, Montérégie, the Laurentians, Lanaudière and Outaouais. At the start of the morning, the number of subscribers without power exceeded the 52,000 mark.
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.
Route 138, in the Saint-Barthélemy sector, was closed due to toppled poles.
Teams from the state company were deployed to the affected areas Saturday morning to try to restore power as quickly as possible. 160 workers were mobilized, Hydro-Québec said late in the morning.
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