Thousands of area Hydro One customers impacted by outages

By Richard Coffin

Hydro One says crews are working to restore power after severe winds caused outages across southwest, central and eastern Ontario, including our area.  

Dozens of outages are reported from Port Loring to the Almaguin area, Powassan to Mattawa and in West Nipissing too.   

Upwards of 11,000 Hydro One customers are impacted in those areas.  

Expected restoration times range from the dinner hour (5 pm or 6 pm) to 11 pm Wednesday night.  

“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,” states Hydro One in it’s provincial update. “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.”

You can check Hydro One’s outage map for updates on restoration times.

Meantime, the Near North District School Board says South River Public School is closed Wednesday, because of a power outage.

The board says several of its schools were initially impacted by power outages with closures put in place.

However, most closures have since been cancelled after confirmation the power was restored at those locations.