Tens of thousands of Hydro-Québec clients are without power on Montreal’s South Shore after a bus hit an electricity pylon at the intersection of Chambly Street and Highway 30 around 9:30 p.m. Saturday.
The bus, transporting a group of volunteers, collided with a car before slamming into the Hydro tower which was supporting two 315 kilovolt power lines, according to Longueuil police.
Emergency services were called to the scene and two people were taken to hospital. Longueuil police say they do not fear for their lives.
At its peak the outage affected approximately 88,000 customers. There are just over 70,000 that are still without power Sunday morning.
Hydro-Québec crews are working to restore power via other power lines, according to spokesperson Jonathan Côté, since rebuilding the pylon will take a few days. They hope to restore power by 5 p.m. today, he says.
“Considering the impact on our grid, and the importance of that line in the area it’s really as quick as we can do at the moment.”
Côté adds that the collision was “out of the ordinary” and is a very rare occurrence. Hydro-Québec will look into the details of what happened and see if it needs to make some changes to some of its pylons, he says.