In the Rosemont district, the devastation was visible from early morning. Beaubien Park was strewn with branches and many were walking around, phone in hand, to photograph this unusual spring scene.
Rue Louis-Hébert, south of Rue Beaubien, was closed to all traffic due to all the fallen trees. Without electricity for several hours, Serge Tardif had started the day by making his coffee on a fondue stove.
“We have no news. I took out small radios, we are not used to such things. The last time was in 1998,” he said, referring to the ice storm.
With its 35 mm of freezing rain falling in Montreal, Wednesday’s storm will go down in history as one of the most important since the massive ice storm of January 1998 and its 100 mm of freezing rain fell over six days.
It was La Presse who taught Serge Tardif that it might take a few days to restore the electricity. Although the mercury was above zero, his house was starting to get colder.
“I’ll go to the hotel, I won’t break my bicycle with this,” he said. However, he was worried about his two full fridges and freezer. “I hope the insurance will reimburse,” he said.
In many neighborhoods, interjections rang out among walkers. “Tabarouette!” exclaimed a passerby. “Ah, cibolus! “, launched Richard Pagé when he saw a huge branch fallen on a car in the Ahuntsic district, in Montreal.
And it was far from the only one. In all, the City of Montreal reported that more than 350 trees and 1600 branches had fallen as a result of the storm, even more than the already heavy toll made the day before.
At the height of the blackouts, virtually the entire west of the island of Montreal – west of Highway 13 – was plunged into darkness. Residential streets were still littered with debris Thursday morning.
On Roosevelt Street in Pierrefonds, Anna Lucia was helping city workers remove dozens of branches from a large tree that had fallen thin overnight. “I had already told the City that branches from the tree fell when it was windy. Twice I asked them to be able to cut it. But they refused. »
Near the Rivière des Prairies, on Boulevard Gouin, André Laniel had come to see the damage around the Sainte-Geneviève church. “A big branch fell on my vehicle, but I’d rather not touch it… I wouldn’t want it to become the widowhood branch!” “, he launched, smiling at his wife.
On the Île-Bizard side, several teams were busy clearing the streets of fallen trees. “The big concern here is gas,” said Conrad Boucher, taking a break from sweeping, on the way to Bord-du-Lac. “We all have generators to run the sump pumps. [Wednesday], my neighbor had to go all the way to Lachine to find a gas station that had electricity. »
Shortly after noon Thursday, the ice had almost completely melted in the streets of Pointe-Claire, near the river. Bill Ecclestone had been busy: the day before, a Hydro-Quebec cable had fallen on Clément Street, carrying the connection equipment attached to his house.
At midday, an electrician had already come to repair the damage to his installations. All that remained was to wait for the technicians from the state-owned company. “I tried to call them, but I might as well try to get an audience with the Pope!” »
Hydro-Québec and the City of Montreal estimate that it will take several more days before the situation returns to normal.
Thursday afternoon, at least, it was still far from the case. Due to the ice that was breaking off their structures, three of the bridges to get to the South Shore, namely the Samuel-De Champlain, Jacques-Cartier and Victoria bridges, were partially closed temporarily, which complicated the ‘peak hour.
A first victim would be to be deplored in connection with the episode of freezing rain on Wednesday, a sixty-year-old dead crushed under the weight of a tree branch in the municipality of Coteaux, in Montérégie.
According to the first information available, the man was busy cutting branches at the back of his residence when he was crushed by the weight of one of them shortly before 10:30 am. first responders undertook resuscitation maneuvers, but his death was quickly noted.
In addition to this sad incident, Urgences-santé has reported several cases of poisoning due to the use of propane appliances indoors, a reflex to be avoided at all costs, insisted the organization’s spokesperson, Stéphane Smith.
Paramedics in Montreal and Laval actually had to carry out a dozen interventions for carbon monoxide poisoning in the wake of the freezing rain storm, Urgences-santé said Thursday.
“We have recorded six cases in the Montreal region and four cases in the Laval region in the last 24 hours,” said Jean-Pierre Rouleau, spokesperson for Urgences-santé, in the early evening.
Urgences-santé could not say yesterday whether the 10 cases were all related to power outages. No one lost their life in these events.
