Fallen trees and branches litter the streets of mid-town Toronto this Sunday (December 22, 2013) as more than a quarter of a million people in Canada’s largest municipality are without power. Toronto Hydro has estimated 250,000 in the dark but later in the day raised that number to 300,000. Across the Greater Toronto Area, it appears as many as half a million may be without power. Because of the still uncounted number of lines down in Toronto it is likely that many will face Christmas Eve, or maybe even Christmas morning, without lights and power..Hydro emergency sources were telling residents to expect service for snapped wires laying across vehicles to be looked after “in two or three days.” It is, as Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong put it, the worst storm the city has see in recent times. Hydro CEO Anthony Haines called the ice storm “catastrophic.” Mayor Ford held a news conference in the early afternoon in which he said that two hospitals, Sunnybrook and East General, are without power. This disconcerting news was clarified by Premier Wynne in her news conference in which she noted that the two hospitals are operating on back up generated power. She thanked those who still had electricity in their homes for welcoming neighbors who were caught in the blackout into their homes. The outages have occurred in patches of sometimes curious pattern through the mid-town corridor of the city. One aspect of this is the number of mature trees in that part of the city. Sometimes an outage involved only one home. Elsewhere, as in large parts of South Bayview, the outage is quite general. Toronto Hydro said it may be up to 72 hours before power is fully restored. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Harper said his thoughts are with with those who are without power. Photo via Twitter of Toronto after a long dark night of falling trees.
