Blackouts hit thousands across GTA


Cbc.ca
March 4, 2015

Thousands across the GTA lost electrical power on Tuesday night and, by early Wednesday, it was unclear for many when the lights would come back on.

Toronto Hydro said 25,000 of its customers were still without power by late Tuesday night - hours after the lights first started to flicker.

Outages hit thousands more north of the city, according to PowerStream, while "momentary" blackouts were reported in Mississauga by Enersource.

The utility companies blamed the blackouts on a combination of the bad weather that hit the region on Tuesday, and salt spray, which can interfere with electrical lines.

There were more than 50 transformer and pole fires across the GTA, according to Toronto Fire Services.

"The weather wreaked havoc on our system the evening," said Toronto Hydro spokesman Brian Buchan. "It's been a real combination of the salt, snow and freezing rain."

"All our crews are out there - they're working hard and we're calling other crews in," said Buchan.

"But it's like Whack-a-Mole. We get one [problem] taken care of and another one goes down."

The weather improved late Tuesday night, which Buchan said will make it easier to restore power, though he did not provide an estimate when the lights will go back on for any of the affected neighbourhoods.

Toronto Hydro says most of the blackouts are in Scarborough and Etobicoke. Its online outage map also shows blackouts in East York and across North York, though Toronto Hydro has said the map might not be accurate because of the high number of incidents.

PowerStream's online outage map shows a number of mostly small blackouts scattered across its territory, including Woodbridge, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham and Aurora.