Snow storm over southern Quebec | The next day

In the Rosemont district, devastation was visible from early morning. Beaubien Park was full of branches and many people were wandering around with their phones to photograph this extraordinary spring scene.

Rue Louis-Hébert, south of Rue Beaubien, was closed to all traffic due to fallen trees. With no electricity for several hours, Serge Tardif started the day by making his coffee in a fondue oven.

“We have no news. I picked up small radios, we weren’t used to things like that. The last time he spoke was in 1998, about a blizzard.

With its 35 mm of freezing rain falling on Montreal, Wednesday’s storm will go down in history as the most significant since the January 1998 snowstorm and its 100 mm of freezing rain in six days.

Hints of disappointment

This is Pres Serge Tardiff taught that it could take days to restore power. Even though the mercury was above zero, his house started getting cold.

“I’m going to the hotel and I’m not going to break my bike with this,” he said. However, he was worried about his two full refrigerators and freezer. “Hopefully the insurance will pay,” he said.

In several neighborhoods, interruptions rang out among the walkers. “Tabarood! shouted a passerby. “Ah, Sibole! “, began Richard Page, when he saw a large branch fall on a car in Montreal’s Ahansic district.

And it was far from the only one. In total, the city of Montreal reported that more than 350 trees and 1,600 branches were downed as a result of the storm, more than the highest number recorded the previous day.

The West Island was hit hard

At the height of the blackouts, the entire west of the island of Montreal — west of Highway 13 — was plunged into darkness. Residential streets were also littered with garbage on Thursday morning.

On Rue Roosevelt, Pierrefonds, Anna Lucia helped municipal workers remove dozens of branches from a large tree that had thinned during the night. “I have already told the city that the tree branches fell when the wind blew. I asked them twice if they could cut it. But they refused. »

On Boulevard Gouin, near Rivière des Prairies, André Laniel had come to see the damage around the Saint-Geneviève church. “A big branch fell on my vehicle but I’d rather not touch it… I don’t want it to turn into a widow’s branch! “, he smiled at his wife.

On the Île-Bizard side, several crews were working to clear fallen trees from the streets. “The big concern here is gas,” said Konrad Boucher, taking a break from sweeping at Chemin du Board-du-Loc. “We all have generators to run the sump pumps. [Mercredi], my neighbor had to go all the way to Lachine to find a service station with electricity. »

By noon Thursday, the snow had almost completely melted on the streets of Pointe-Claire near the river. Bill Ecclestone was busy: the day before, a Hydro-Québec cable had fallen on rue Clément, taking out the connection equipment attached to his house.

By afternoon, an electrician had already arrived to repair the damage to his installations. All that remains is to wait for the technicians from the state-owned company. “I tried calling them, but I might as well try to get an audience with the Pope!” »

First victim

Hydro-Québec and the City of Montreal estimate that it will be several days before the situation returns to normal.

As of Thursday afternoon, at least, that was still far from the case. Three bridges leading to the south bank, namely the Samuel-de-Champlain, Jacques-Cartier and Victoria bridges, were temporarily closed as ice broke their structures, complicating ‘peak hour’.

The first victim of Wednesday’s freezing rain episode was a sixty-year-old man who was crushed under the weight of a tree branch in the municipality of Coteaux in Monterrey.

According to the first information received, the man was busy cutting branches at the back of his house when he was crushed by the weight of one of them.At 10:30 a.m. first responders performed resuscitation maneuvers, but his death was soon pronounced.

Carbon monoxide poisoning

In addition to this tragic incident, Urgences-santé has reported several cases of poisoning from using propane appliances indoors, which organization spokesman Stephen Smith stressed should be avoided at all costs.

Paramedics in Montreal and Laval actually had to perform a dozen interventions for carbon monoxide poisoning in the wake of the freezing rain storm, Argens-Sante said Thursday.

“In the last 24 hours we have recorded six cases in the Montreal region and four in the Laval region,” said Jean-Pierre Rouleau, spokesman for Argens-Sante, earlier in the evening.

Emergencies-Sande could not say yesterday if all the 10 cases were related to the power outage. No one lost their lives in these incidents.

In collaboration with Philippe D’Esierra-Lessard, Pres