A series of violent storms that swept through Quebec on Tuesday knocked out power to more than 144,000 clients, including one of the largest hospitals in the province, and badly injured a teenager in Montreal.
Montreal’s Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital—its rapidly aging infrastructure in serious need of major renovations—was hit with a power outage, the consequences of which spilled into Wednesday.
Tuesday’s outage lasted a few hours, with storm damage including shattered windows. Just before 11 p.m. the agency that oversees the province’s health network said power had been restored and teams were getting everything up and running.
But officials were forced to cancel about 30 surgeries on Wednesday and transfer one surgery patient to Santa Cabrini Hospital for urgent care, said Thaïs Dubé, a spokeswoman for the regional health agency in eastern Montreal. Ambulances transporting trauma patients were being diverted from the hospital to other facilities, Dubé said Wednesday in an email.
“Everything is currently being done to restore the situation and allow the resumption of all our activities in complete safety,” she wrote.
Health Minister Christian Dubé, facing criticism from opposition parties on Wednesday, said he would find a solution “in the coming weeks” so that much-needed upgrade work at Maisonneuve-Rosemont could begin.
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Meanwhile, as of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Hydro-Québec was still working to restore power to more than 45,000 clients after wind gusts of more than 100 kilometres per hour knocked out trees and equipment. Most power outages were in the Laurentians north of Montreal, and the Montérégie and Outaouais regions.
Environment Canada had warned on Tuesday of thunderstorms moving eastward across Quebec, and of large hail, heavy rain and strong wind gusts.
In Montreal, a teenager was seriously injured after becoming stuck under a tree that fell in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough.
Transport officials closed Highway 19 in Montreal’s northern suburb of Laval in both directions Wednesday morning to repair damage to a piece of infrastructure that had caught fire the night before.
In the lower Laurentians, the towns of Rosemère, Lorraine, and Bois-des-Filion issued a precautionary boil water advisory, as a power outage affected the computer equipment at a water treatment plant.
