Power restoration across the city could be a multi-day event: Hydro Ottawa

Hydro Ottawa says it could take multiple days to fully restore power outages after the weekend storm.

During a media availability on Monday, May 23, Hydro Ottawa's director of system operations, Joseph Muglia, said the focus will be on restoring large-scale outages before crews can tackle smaller-scale outages. 

Even though hydro crews have called in help from New Brunswick and Kingston with restoration efforts, Muglia said the situation remains a challenge.

“The situation is complex with extensive damage to infrastructure across the city to both the provincial transmission system, our Hydro One supplier
and our local system that belongs to us, Hydro Ottawa,” he said, adding that this storm was worse than previous weather events such as the ice storm in 1998 and the tornadoes in 2018.  

One of the reasons this storm was significantly worse was because of the number of hydro poles that were downed as a result of high winds, according to Hydro Ottawa's chief executive officer and president Bryce Conrad. 

“Our own service territory, our own distribution system has been crushed,” he said, adding that at least 187 poles were down, which he pointed out was higher than both of the past notable weather events. 

Although Hydro Ottawa is continuing to restore power to affected areas, Muglia said full restoration of power will be a multi-day event. Crews will be focusing on damage assessment throughout the week. 

But Conrad predicts there could be delays during the process.

“So, the damage assessment is something that will be done continuously but we are predicting or forecasting a two to four day outage from now so, yes, (hopefully) we'll have a vast majority of the service territory restored,” he said, 

As crews continue to restore power across Ottawa, traffic lights at various intersections continue to be out of order. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson suggested residents stay off the roads if possible. 

“I encourage everyone, if you can, stay at home to work if you have power, obviously that's a more realistic option, if you don't have power, obviously that's 
not an option,” he said. 

If residents do come across downed wires, they're asked to stay at least 10 metres away and to immediately contact Hydro Ottawa.