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High winds hamper Hydro One power restoration

Toronto, November 13, 2003 - 5 p.m. Update - Continuing high winds exceeding 100 kilometres an hour, poor visibility and hazardous driving conditions are severely hampering Hydro One's efforts to restore power.

Close to 100,000 customers are still out of power across the province, including about 25,000 in the southwest from Owen Sound to Lambton and Essex counties. New outages have been reported throughout the east in Tweed, Picton and Cobden as the storm moves through the province. Up to 50,000 customers will be without power overnight.

The severe weather has inflicted substantial damage on Hydro One's low voltage distribution system. Hundreds of poles have been snapped and many kilometres of broken conductor are lying on roads and deep in the bush. The Walkerton area was particularly hard hit with almost 60 broken poles.

Trees and limbs falling into power lines caused much of the damage. In many cases power was restored only to be knocked out a short time later. There are reports of hundreds of poles down, many in difficult-to-access off-road locations.

Hydro One has mobilized all available lines and forestry crews and dispatched them to the hard hit areas.

Restoration updates will be provided to media this evening and throughout tomorrow.

To get power outage updates on Hydro One's distribution system, go to www.HydroOnenetworks.com.

Hydro One Networks owns and operates the province-wide electricity high voltage transmission network and largest low voltage distribution system in Ontario that serves over one million end-use customers. Hydro One is wholly-owned by the provincial government.

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For more information, contact Hydro One Media Relations 24 hours a day at 1-877-506-7584 (toll-free in Ontario only) or 416-345-6868.