Thousands still without power after ice storm

Thousands of people still remain without power across Ontario. Slowly but surely, progress is being made. But, there are differing views on how successful the recovery efforts have been.

There are still about 50 customers in North Burlington without power-and a couple dozen on the Hamilton Mountain. While in Toronto, there are still thousands without power. But officials actually expect things to get worse before they get better.

About 32-thousand are still without power and the head of Toronto Hydro says the ice storm was the worst the company has ever seen. Horizon Utilities has stepped in to help out Toronto Hyrdo with restoring power, and a team from the Ontario Provincial Police are assisting the Toronto Police Service conduct door to door checks in impacted areas.
Trees coated with ice caused many branches to snap and bring down power lines from Southern Ontario through to Atlantic Canada. About 62,000 customers in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick are still without hydro and officials warn it could take until New Year’s Day for all power to be back on.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: “We have 32 thousand residents without power. The numbers are declining as fast as possible. There are 200 trucks from all the municipalities on the ground as we speak trying to restore the hydro.”

Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines: “We are recovering as the Mayor has said from what has been the largest storm in Toronto Hydro history. We are making good progress. But I will tell you that, as late as this morning, we had additional stations lose power as a result of some of the wind gusts and trees continuing to fall on the lines. I’m most concerned that, with these wind gusts that are expected over the next 24 hours, that additional damage will be done. As we begin to see melting into tomorrow and the next day, that is likely to result in additional electrical damage that occurs as part of water and icing that will no doubt occur. So we’re in fact expecting these 32,000 customers not to be the final work ahead of us. In fact, we expect to have additional damage over the next 24 and 48 hours.”

And Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne was forced to defend her Energy Minister who has been noticeably absent throughout the ice storm crisis. At a news conference Friday, Wynne said her government has had a presence in most areas affected by the storm: “So I been in the GTA which is the area that has been the most affected. Our minister Deb Matthews was in Guelph earlier this week, so we had a government presence in all parts of the affected areas. I believe that Minister Chiarelli is going to be visiting some centres today and is going to be doing some media the fact is that our government has been on the ground working with the affected municipalities since day one we will continue to do that.”

And Toronto Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly has apologized for traveling to Florida while Toronto was hit hard by the ice storm. Kelly was criticized for heading south to be with his family on Christmas Day, as thousands in Toronto remained without power. However, Kelly said his trip to Florida was for “very personal family reasons” but that he was still working “on behalf of the residents of Toronto”. Kelly went on to apologize and say he learned a lesson.