Ice covered trees branches in Meaford, Ont., on March 30.Becky Holvik/The Canadian Press
Hundreds of thousands of people across Ontario were still without power on the third day of a spring storm, after freezing rain coated swaths of the province with thick layers of ice.
An outage map from provincial utility Hydro One showed more than 417,000 homes and businesses remained without power on Monday afternoon.
The map also showed that crews have been able to restore power to 460,000 customers since the start of the storm over the weekend.
“It’s all hands on deck as crews continue to work alongside our contractors to restore power to customers,” the utility said.
“While we continue to mobilize crews from other parts of the province, we anticipate it will take several days to restore all customers.”
Hydro One said people should stay at least 10 metres away from any fallen power line even if it does not appear to be live as crews continue their work.
Ontario Provincial Police said warming centres opened in Orillia and Tay Township, which are among the hardest hit areas of central Ontario.
The freezing rain, along with high winds on Monday, have “caused significant damage to trees and power lines throughout,” they said, noting that there have been at least 38 road closures in central Ontario due to the storm.
The cities of Orillia and Peterborough, as well as the cottage country district of Muskoka and the Township of Oro-Medonte, all declared states of emergency.
Several school boards in the impacted area, including those in Simcoe County and Sudbury, closed their schools and child-care services on Monday due to the ice storm.
A broken tree limb lies blocking a road after an ice storm in Barrie, Ont., on March 30.Deepa Babington/Reuters
Many businesses were also closed.
Gina Allison runs a home-based salon in Oro-Medonte and has been without power since early Saturday morning.
She and her family hunkered down on Sunday as trees crashed onto their deck and cars, which she called “nerve wracking.”
“We had trees coming down all around us, which was crazy. I have never seen anything like this,” she said in a phone interview Monday.
“This storm is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.”
Allison said both of her family’s cars were damaged, with one of them getting severely dented after a tree hit it “like a torpedo.”
She’s had to close her salon while she assesses the damage and waits for power to be restored. Clients and friends have offered to provide meals and shelter in the meantime, she said, but her family has decided to wait it out.
“It’s such a good community we live in,” she said. “I look just on this street and I’m overwhelmed, there’s no treetops left in this whole neighbourhood … it’s devastating.”
Environment Canada has warned that the storm system is moving east.
The weather agency said parts of Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were under freezing rain and storm warnings Monday.
In Quebec, more than 55,000 Hydro-Quebec customers remained in the dark as of 1 p.m. Monday, as crews worked to restore power.
The vast majority of the outages were in the Laurentians and Lanaudiere regions north of Montreal, where ice accumulation downed trees and power lines.
--- With files from Rianna Lim in Toronto and Morgan Lowrie in Montreal.