Electricity was cut off from hundreds of thousands of homes in Quebec, eastern Canada, following a snow storm that struck the country, killing two people and causing severe material damage, especially in Montreal.
"We have restored electricity to just over a third of the people affected by the power outages caused by the ice storm," said Idro Quebec, the electricity supplier.
About 630,000 homes are still without electricity, compared to 1.1 million homes during the height of the storm.
Quebec Minister of Economy and Energy Pierre Fitzgibbon said in a press conference this morning (Friday): "We are very satisfied with the management of the crisis by Idro Quebec."
"We know that for some customers it will continue into Sunday, possibly Monday," Idro-Quebec spokesman Regis Tellier said.
He added that "favorable weather conditions" throughout the day should "accelerate the restoration of service."
Meanwhile, the city of Montreal, which witnessed about half of the faults, opened six temporary emergency shelters in which residents with no electricity spent the night.
These stations remain available during the day for those who want to warm up on the first day of the long Easter break.
The authorities have recorded two deaths since the start of the storm in Canada. A resident of eastern Ontario was killed by a falling tree Wednesday, and a 60-year-old man in Quebec was fatally injured in similar circumstances.
The storm hit Quebec and Ontario, Canada's two most populous provinces. It was the biggest outage to hit Quebec's power grid since the 1998 ice storm, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.
Okaz (Ottawa)