Hundreds of Toronto Hydro customers in Etobicoke without power

Hydro towers are seen over a golf course in Toronto on Wednesday, November 4, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

Toronto — About 700 Toronto Hydro customers in Etobicoke could be without power for most of the day as crews work to repair an outage caused by an underground cable fault.

Toronto Hydro says that the cable fault is the result of water damage that was first discovered overnight.

The outage is affecting customers in an area bounded by Bloor Street to the south, Eva Road to the north, The East Mall to the east and The West Mall to the west.

“Crews overnight were isolating these cable and preparing for their work area which included pumping out water from a couple of underground cable chambers,” Toronto Hydro spokesperson Russell Baker told CP24 on Monday morning. “Crews have done this now and they have successfully removed all the water and are now running a series of new cables underground, all of which need to be watertight. These repairs are complicated and do take time and care to do them properly. We cannot rush this work.”

Baker said that Toronto Hydro continues to have enough crews on hand to respond to any significant outage, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that the current estimate for the full restoration of power in Etobicoke is 4 p.m.

“We know that this is a challenging time to be without power, and we thank everyone for their patience while our crews perform the complicated repairs necessary to restore power,” he told CP24.