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Freezing rain stalls services, causes closures in Kingston, Belleville, Brockville regions

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Freezing rain stalls services, causes closures in Kingston, Belleville, Brockville regions
Freezing rain has affected services across eastern Ontario following an ice storm that hit much of the province – Dec 30, 2019

Over the weekend, Environment Canada sent out advisories warning that most of southern, central and eastern Ontario would experience freezing rain.

The icy rain hit the Belleville, Kingston and Brockville regions in the evening on Sunday and continued throughout the night into Monday morning, covering the streets, trees and sidewalks with a layer of ice.

The inclement weather caused power outages, closures and delays of city services in all three regions.

Elexicon Energy, which provides hydro for the city of Belleville, reported an outage on Monday morning for up to 5,000 customers. The power outage hit after 6 a.m. Monday and was fixed by 10:30 a.m.

In the Kingston region, other outages, including one in Rideau Heights affecting over 400 customers and another in the area of Victoria and Dorrance streets, which was caused by a falling branch, were reported.

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Another outage in the Barriefield area reportedly affected about 650 people.

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By 2 p.m., Utilities Kingston said they had restored power to all of their affected areas.

Hydro One also reported power outages affecting more than 4,700 customers in Kingston’s east end, 340 customers near Bayridge Drive and Taylor Kidd Boulevard and another outage affecting nearly 1,000 customers on Wolfe Island. Most of the larger outages were resolved by 2 p.m., but some pockets in the region remain without hydro.

Certain services and businesses were cancelled due to the weather.

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The Glenora Ferry was taken out of service due to the freezing rain as well.

Garbage and recycling collection in Brockville and Rideau Lakes township was cancelled on Monday due to the rain, with collection being pushed to Tuesday.

Prince Edward County has also cancelled its recycling pickup. The county is encouraging people to hold their collectibles until their next collection day.

The city of Kingston announced that its collection was delayed on Monday due to the weather, but was still picking up garbage, recycling and green bin.

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More to come.

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