OTTAWA — Hydro Ottawa says it’s working directly with 125 individual customers to restore power after a deadly storm on May 21 caused widespread outages across Ontario.
The utility says it also had two planned outages as part of its storm clean up work.
It says that both of those outages are necessary to ensure long-term reliability in Ottawa’s power supply
Hydro One said Thursday that progress has slowed in reconnecting more than 2,800 customers in Bancroft and Tweed.
A Hydro One spokeswoman said the damage is so localized in those communities that power can only be restored one customer at a time.
Tiziana Baccega Rosa said the number of properties with restored power seems stagnant partly because people are opening their cottages for the summer and finding that their seasonal properties had the electricity knocked out by the storm, adding to Hydro One’s outages.
The storm killed 11 people in Ontario and Quebec and left hundreds of thousands in the dark after high winds toppled countless hydro poles and trees.
Environment Canada has said the severe weather involved a derecho, a rare widespread windstorm associated with a line of thunderstorms, that developed near Sarnia, Ont., and moved northeast across the province, ending in Quebec City.