Only about 250 Montreal homes and 500 Quebec clients in total are still without power Monday afternoon after a blast of wintry weather over the weekend downed Hydro Quebec power lines.

Electrical service went down as a result of widespread freezing rain across the province Sunday that left a thick coat of ice on tree branches and power lines.

Across the province, about 500 Hydro customers are still without power as of 9:30 p.m. Monday. At the peak of the outage, about 155,000 clients were in the dark, mostly in the Monteregie and Montreal regions.

A Hydro spokesperson said about 95 per cent of affected clients are back on the grid, and the the rest of are expected to have the power reconnected before the end of the day.

Steven Dorrington had been without power for 20 hours when his lights came back on Monday morning.

His stove was also fried because of an issue with his breaker.

He expressed frustration with how quickly the outage was fixed, considering the fact that his electricity was back on within 10 minutes of Hydro crews showing up in his neighbourhood.

“All they did was push up and click and all of a sudden the power’s back on,” he said.

Montreal will experience very cold temperatures for the first full week of 2015. The temperature will fall throughout the day Monday until it reaches -17C in the afternoon. The coldest night of the week will be Wednesday, when the temperature is expected to drop to -27C.

Icy conditions meant a higher than average number of patients treated for falls at local hospitals.

 

On an average winter day, the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria Hospitals see about three or four fall-related injuries combined, but that number skyrocketed Monday, said Dr. Tarek Razek, chief of adult trauma at the MUHC.

 

“There have been 40 cases just today alone, and that's just at our institution, so take that over the city and look at the impact on the community,” he said. “Some of them are quite serious events and quite serious injuries.”

 

Salt was also a hot commodity to keep people safe.

 

“We've probably gone through today, only at least 700 or 800 bags of salt,” said Mark Lanouette, manager of a Rona hardware store.

 

The city uses salt and gravel, but it will take a number of days before the ice melts. In the meantime, police are urging Montrealers to be cautious.

 

“There's a lot of pedestrians walking on the side of the sidewalk on the road, due to the icy sidewalk...at this moment. So if driver of a motor vehicle doesn't see what's going on, it's going to be very dangerous,” said Montreal police spokesperson Raphael Bergeron.

 

Police are also reminding people to clean the snow and ice from their cars properly this winter, or they can face a fine of more than $150.

Ice Storm 98 memories

Some had ominously noted that Sunday marks the 17th anniversary of the beginning of the 1998 ice storm that led to massive long-term power outages across the province. The freezing rain was preceded by a snowy Saturday. Parts of Quebec saw 15-20 centimetres of snow fall Saturday night.

Many now are wondering what took so long for Hydro-Quebec to reconnect them in this much smaller storm, much smaller than the ice storm of ’98.

Hydro-Quebec spokesperson Serge Abergel said it's not always so simple

“At the height of the event last night we had 155,000 people without power, 600 outages, so 600 different places where our work crews had to go inspect and then take action. This is why it takes time,” he said.

Hydro-Quebec spends $60 million per year to prevent power failures. Much of that is cutting trees that are near hydro lines

“If you live in Beaconsfield or in Hampstead and you have mature trees, people don't want to see us come by and cut all the trees it's not something that is sustainable,” said Abergel.

Montreal firefighters reported that they had responded to 500 weather-related calls between noon and six p.m. on Sunday.

Many flight departures were delayed or cancelled at Trudeau Airport Sunday due to the weather conditions, delays that continued into Monday.

Montreal firefighters reported that they had responded to 500 weather-related calls between noon and six p.m. on Sunday.

Many flight departures were delayed or cancelled at Trudeau Airport Sunday due to the weather conditions, delays that continued into Monday.

Tree branches laden with ice fell onto electric line created conditions which caused a transformer to explode in Brossard late Sunday afternoon.