Hundreds Still Without Power After Violent Storm
Posted June 9, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It may have been short-lived but the violent storm that tore through the GTA and other parts of Ontario on Friday left at least 116,000 homes without power. Toronto Hydro said up to 30,000 customers in the city had no electricity at some point. A few hundred homes are still without, as crews work to finish the final repairs.
Spokesperson for Toronto Hydro Tanya Bruckmueller said Saturday, “Our intention is to get everybody back up as quickly as possible. Our crews worked through the night and we just did a shift change so we have our day crews in now who’ll continue to work until we get everybody up and running.”
She added that it’s hard to say exactly what time power will be restored for everyone because they’re dealing with triple the number of calls and depending on the neighbourhood, the electrical units are sometimes buried in the backyard making it harder for crews to access and repair.
Across Ontario, at least 121,000 customers lost power. At last check, 27,000 were still without. Hydro One hopes to have everyone back up by Sunday.
The dark clouds rolled in just before 5pm on Friday and in a matter of minutes the city was slammed with torrential downpours accompanied by gusting winds of up to 90 km an hour and some areas got huge chunks of hail. The storm only lasted about 20 minutes and luckily no injuries were reported. Reports indicate that North York was hit the hardest in the GTA while Scarborough managed to get through the storm unscathed.
At one point, Environment Canada issued “isolated tornado” warnings for certain areas but once the severe weather subsided they were called off. Bruckmueller urges anyone that encounters downed power lines to stay away from them and call Toronto Hydro at (416) 542-8000.
