Premier Doug Ford said Thursday that he plans to visit some areas affected by prolonged power outages since a powerful ice storm hit central and northern Ontario over the weekend.
More than 190,000 homes and businesses were still in the dark midday Thursday, a Hydro One outage map showed, after the storm caused severe damage in cities such as Orillia and Peterborough.
Another storm system that moved through parts of Ontario Wednesday and overnight caused additional scattered outages and slowed down restoration efforts, the utility said.
Hydro One said power has been restored for more than 83 per cent of nearly one million affected customers, but there is “still a lot of work ahead” until everyone gets their electricity back.
Thousands of Ontarians still without power after ice storm
“It’s heartbreaking,” Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning. “We’re working full out again, we have the teams out there from emergency management, the Ontario Corps, warming centres, foods brought in.”
Ford’s office said he would be visiting the storm command centre in Orillia on Friday.
He said the governments of Quebec and Saskatchewan have sent hydro crews to help, and he also thanked non-governmental organizations, including GlobalMedic and Team Rubicon, for providing supplies and cutting trees.
Hydro One said the storm is the most severe weather event the utility has faced since the ice storm of 1998.
It said 3,800 Hydro One workers, contractors and others are working to restore power to hardest-hit areas and “most” customers are expected to be back online by the weekend.
“For remote areas, including customers who can only be reached by water, restoration may take longer,” the utility said in a statement. “Road access continues to be a challenge in the most impacted areas, along with safety concerns of tree branches and limbs coming down.”
Ford said some people in those hard-hit areas don’t have access to information and online resources.
“When someone’s internet is down and televisions are down, we have to come up with a new mechanism to communicate because it’s very difficult to communicate when people don’t have the ability to watch television,” he said.
Provincial police have been asking non-locals to keep away from the affected areas until storm cleanup is under control and urging residents to be patient as power outages persist.
OPP said Thursday that a hydro worker in the Peterborough area was threatened by a driver upset about the outages.
“The Peterborough County OPP understand that area residents still experiencing power outages are feeling frustrated and upset but remind individuals that making threats can be considered a criminal offence and will not be tolerated,” police said in a news release.
Some parts of southern Ontario were hit by another round of wild spring weather, with thunderstorms dumping as much as 75 millimetres of rain in parts of the Greater Toronto Area in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Rain storm brings flooding to some GTA roadways
Provincial police asked drivers to use caution as flooding was been reported on highways throughout the Greater Toronto Area, and Peel Region police said some roads near Highway 407 in Brampton and Mississauga were closed due to flooding.
The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority was also cautioning the public about possible localized ponding and rising water levels due to rainfall, as well as melting snow and ice.
Much of Quebec was under a freezing rain warning Thursday, with a chance of two to four millimetres of ice buildup possible. Further east, in the Baie-Comeau area, a snowfall warning was ineffect, with up to 20 centimetres of the white stuff expected.
Hydro-Quebec reported that roughly 3,600 customers were without power Thursday morning.
