Hydro One In Final Stages Of Restoration After Ice Storm

Recovering from the ice storm that devastated parts of central and northern Ontario last month has been difficult – especially for residents and businesses who were left without power for days or EVEN weeks. The weight of the ice accumulation caused trees to fall, lines to collapse and more than 2,700 poles to break. Compounding the damage were the high winds and additional freezing rain in early May.

Now that Hydro One crews have restored power to more than 99.6 per cent of their customers, the company says they are continuing to work through the widespread and significant damage to make repairs and rebuild local electricity infrastructure. A news release states that while “all residential customers that crews can safely access are restored”, work continues to restore power to 1,009 residential customers and 5,140 secondary customers (cottages/trailers). Issues like partially frozen lakes, localized flooding and the inability to safely land helicopters are creating unsafe conditions for crews.

Hydro One says that Mutual Assistance utility and contractor resources are now being released, and the company’s own crews will complete the remaining restoration work. They continue to focus on restoring power and reconnecting customers that had damage to their owned equipment and have passed the Electrical Safety Authority inspection. Organizations from across the province that supported impacted areas include: Alectra, Algoma Power, Bluewater Power, Centre Wellington Hydro, CNP Fort Erie, Elexicon, Enwin, Entergus, Enova Power, Epcor, Essex Power, ERTH Power, Grand Bridge Energy, Hydro Ottawa, Kingston PUC, Lakefront Utilities, London Hydro, Milton Hydro, Niagara Peninsula Energy, New Brunswick Power, Oakville Hydro, Ottawa River Power, Oshawa PUC, PUC Service (Sault Ste. Marie), Quebec Hydro, Renfrew Hydro, Toronto Hydro, Wasaga Power, Wellington North Power and Westario Power.

Hydro One’s team of foresters is also supporting restoration efforts by conducting ongoing vegetation maintenance work to remove trees and brush from powerlines to support power quality and reliability across the province.

As part of Hydro One’s standard operating procedure following a significant storm, they will be reviewing their response protocols. That will include damage assessment, establishing estimated times of restoration and the functionality of outage communication tools like their outage map/app and proactive alerts.

Hydro One’s Ice Storm 2025: Recovery Grant was launched on April 7. Directly impacted Indigenous communities and municipalities can apply for a grant of up to $10,000 to support relief and recovery efforts in their local community. Applications can be submitted at www.hydroone.com/about/sustainability/communities#ice-storm.

Below is the updated regional breakdown by operations centre that includes number of outages and customers restored since the beginning of the storm on Friday, March 28, and the number of active outages and customers without power at this time. This includes customers that require an ESA inspection before they can be reconnected.

The number of secondary properties affected by outages is included for each operations centre. These numbers are part of the total in the number of customers without power column. These areas do not align with municipal boundaries as they are our broken down by Hydro One operations centres.