Late April windstorm knocks out power to thousands

Crews are out in full force restoring power after Tuesday’s severe winds caused outages across southwest, central and eastern Ontario.

It’s like déjà vu all over again.

After weeks of clean up and lack of electricity after the March 30 ice storm, Tuesday’s end of April windstorm was a heat-infused carbon copy of the March madness central Ontario endured.

The only difference was the heat. There were no fears of ice accumulations on tree branches as the mercury soared to 26C in Simcoe County.

However, the power did go out for many residents, so ice-making machines and air-conditioning were off the table.

Hydro One reported that crews are still working to restore power as severe winds caused outages in southwest, eastern, and central Ontario.

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The Hydro One Storm Centre posted: “In addition to broken poles and cross arms, damage has largely been caused by tree limbs/trees coming down on power lines and equipment and where the ground is very wet/soft, entire trees have been uprooted.

In some areas, restoration times will be affected by local roads being washed out due to scattered storms and access issues will delay crew access. Crews are assessing damage so that an estimated time of restoration can be assigned to each outage.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Hydro One said it had called in crews from unaffected areas for support. “So, we’ve got all the resources we need to get the power on quickly and safely as possible.”

Several remote areas will likely be without power until Sunday.

Hydro One asks people to stay 10 metres back from fallen lines and report them to 911 and 1-800-434-1235.