'The real deal:' Ice storm snarls travel and cuts power across Eastern
Canada
The Canadian Press - 42 mins ago
TORONTO - A steady dose of freezing rain across much of Eastern Canada
turned roads and sidewalks into skating rinks Sunday, cut power to
hundreds of thousands of people, and played havoc with holiday plans
at one of the busiest travel times of the year.
The situation drew comparisons to the deadly ice storm that encased
Quebec in 1998, as hydro crews across the region struggled to restore
service.
"Some of the crews I've spoken to said this is as bad," said Blair
Peberdy, vice-president of Toronto Hydro, which had 250,000 customers
without power.
"It's certainly a bad situation. These storms tend to wreak havoc and
we have to go street by street with chainsaws."
Anxious passengers found themselves stranded in airports from Toronto
to St. John's, N.L., days before Christmas.
Among them was Bradley Russell, on a break from work in Fort McMurray,
Alta., who had been due to fly home Sunday to his wife and
four-year-old son in Gander, N.L.
"I've got a little boy, he wants me home, so I need to get home," said
Russell as he searched frantically for an alternative flight at
Toronto's Pearson International Airport.
"God knows, if weather comes in again, we might not get home probably
until the new year."
Travellers in Ottawa, Montreal, Fredericton, Saint John, N.B., Halifax
and St. John's all faced flight delays and cancellations.
Via Rail warned commuters to expect delays on its routes between
Toronto and Montreal or Ottawa and police warned people to stay off
the roads if possible.
Salting and sanding crews worked through the night Saturday and into
Sunday in an uphill battle against a dangerous mix of snow, ice
pellets and freezing rain that stretched from Niagara Falls, Ont., to
the Atlantic Coast.
The weather conditions, which saw people skating down streets in
Kingston, Ont., were suspected to have played a role in three fatal
highway crashes in Quebec and another in Ontario on the weekend.
Marie-Eve Giguere, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said parts
of southern Ontario were especially hard hit by two storms over a
three day period.
"They've been reporting freezing rain since Friday as we had a first,
smaller system that left smaller amounts," Giguere said.
Hydro Quebec said almost 49,000 customers were without power, mainly
in the Estrie and Monteregie regions, while another 1,200 customers in
Montreal found themselves in the dark. NB Power reported 4,000
customers without electricity in St. Stephen and Rothesay, N.B.
Sherbrooke, located in the Eastern Townships, one of the hardest hit
parts of the province, suspended all public transportation services.
Peberdy said crews would be working 10- to 12-hour shifts to repair
the damage, but were focusing initially on getting power back to two
hospitals and an east-end water-treatment plant.
"We don't want the water systems in Toronto to go down, and that's why
we're focusing on that," Peberdy said.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford called it one of the worst storms in the city's
history.
"My house is freezing cold, I have little kids, we might have to go to
a hotel tonight, I'm not quite sure what we're going to do," Ford
said.
"It's not good to wake up and have a freezing cold shower."
So far, however, the storm of 2013 appeared to fall well short of the
havoc wreaked in January 1998 when more than two dozen people died.
At its height, almost 10 per cent of the country's population about
three million people were without power when four days of
intermittent freezing rain entombed parts of eastern Ontario, New
Brunswick and western Quebec.
The Canadian Forces deployed 14,000 troops to help with the
devastation and damage at the time was pegged at more than $1 billion.
By Sunday afternoon, the storm had moved eastward but freezing rain
was only expected to stop falling on the Maritimes late in the day,
Environment Canada said.
Overall, power outages affected about 350,000 customers in Ontario, as
ice-coated tree branches snapped and brought down power lines.
Toronto shut down streetcar service along with parts of the subway
system, while regional commuter trains were delayed or suspended.
At Pearson, hopeful travellers snaked around check-in stands or stared
forlornly at flight boards flashing delays or cancellations. Others
passed the time hunched over smartphones and tablets.
Matthew Shields spent Saturday night in Toronto after his flight from
Saint Jean, N.B., to his mother's home in London, Ont., was cancelled.
Facing a 30-hour delay, he was trying Sunday to find a flight to
Sarnia, Ont., instead.
"The past two Christmases I elected to not travel, and in hindsight
that was probably a good decision," Shields said.
"We can't control the weather. There's a lot of people trying to get
to a lot of places."
With files from Will Campbell and Alex Posadzki in Toronto, Ben
Shingler in Montreal
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