Lucille Gagné-Qureshi and her husband Ahmad Qureshi lost power at their home in the Montreal suburb of Kirkland last Wednesday, after a tree branch in their backyard brought down a power line during last week’s ice storm.
“It’s been like hell,” Qureshi told Global News, sitting in the sunlight on a deck at their house, because it was too cold in the house.
“On Saturday morning in the main bedroom upstairs it was 7 degrees,’ explained Gagné-Qureshi. “It was impossible. My husband couldn’t stand it anymore.”
So they went to a hotel.
According to her, on Sunday when they called Hydro-Québec they were told that power was restored to their house.
“So we came back on Sunday,” she recalled. “It was worse. It was so cold, like 5 degrees inside the house, and no electricity.”
She called Hydro again, told them about the downed power line and pointed out that a master electrician sent a report to the utility company.
Gagné-Qureshi said while she was on the phone, the Hydro worker did her a favour by calling the electrician, confirmed the damage and promised that the problem would be taken care of.
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On Monday, the couple called the utility company three times and, according to them, were told each time that their house was reconnected even though it wasn’t. The Kirkland homeowners pointed out that each time they were on the phone for an hour, trying to convince the utility company that they had no power.
In all, the couple stayed at two hotels in eight days — not easy for the the 84-year-old Qureshi, a retired engineer, who, ironically, worked on several Hydro-Québec projects, including James Bay hydroelectric project.
He’s now ill and has mobility challenges.
“I can’t get into the bed,” he sobbed. ‘I can’t get out of the bed without any help.”
On Tuesday, the day Gagné-Qureshi turned 79, they called Hydro again.
They returned home Wednesday and called once more to explain the problem.
“(They said) ‘Oh madame, you have been reconnected, it is in my file,’ Gagné-Qureshi explained. “But I said my daughter is checking every day, we are calling every day and and you’re answering always the same thing, but we are not connected.”
In the meantime the food in their fridge is going bad and they estimate they’ve lost about $300 worth.
They were at their wits’ end.
Finally, mid-afternoon Thursday, without warning, a Hydro crew showed up.
Now the elderly couple say they are relieved that the lights and heat are finally back on and that though they understand that the utility company is busy, they wonder why they had to go through the ordeal.
The two hope never to live through this again, saying this experience was worse than the ’98 ice storm.
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