Utility crews rushed to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of people who faced a Christmas without lights after a messy storm downed power lines throughout eastern Canada and from the Midwest to Maine in the US Just under 200,000 customers in Canada's largest city were without power Monday following a weekend ice storm that wreaked havoc through Ontario to the Atlantic coast, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said Monday. Ford said utility workers from Michigan, Manitoba and elsewhere are in Ontario will assist in the efforts to restore power. More 100,000 customers had power restored in the city, but about 190,000 customers are still without power, Ford said. He called the storm one of the worst in Toronto's history. Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines said some customers may not get power back until after Christmas on the 26th. About 80,000 customers in smaller towns and rural areas in Ontario also remained without power, utility companies said. Nearly 34,000 customers remained without power in Quebec. An icy mix of rain and freezing rain played havoc with the electricity grid across the Maritime provinces as ice-laden trees fell on power lines. NB Power reported about 49,000 residents and businesses were without power in southern New Brunswick early Tuesday, and another 6,600 were without electricity in Nova Scotia. While the freezing rain was expected to peter out by Tuesday, Environment Canada senior meteorologist David Phillips warned that the ice the storm brought would remain as temperatures stayed below freezing. "There's no natural melting going on," he said. "It's going to be human effort and endeavour that will get rid of the sheath of ice that's covering Eastern Canada." The situation meant utility companies working to restore power to thousands of homes had to deal with the possibility that ice-laden tree limbs could continue to splinter, snapping power lines. Crews were working around the clock to get the lights back on in cities and towns across Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, but warned there was a possibility not everyone would be reconnected by Christmas Day. The freezing rain turned roads and sidewalks into skating rinks Sunday and hit holiday plans at one of the busiest travel times of the year. Air travelers were still being frustrated by dozens of flight cancellations and delays at Toronto's Pearson International Airport and at Halifax Stanfield International Airport. The first full day of winter Sunday also brought ice and high wind in the upper US Midwest and northeastern New England states and flooding in the South. More than 390,000 homes and businesses were without power Monday in Michigan, upstate New York and across the northern New England region to Maine, down from Sunday's peak of more than half a million. Most were in Michigan, whose largest utilities said it will be days before power is restored because of the difficulty of working around broken lines. States kept emergency shelters open for people who would be without power, some through Christmas. At least 11 deaths in the US were blamed on the storm, including five people killed in flooding in Kentucky and a woman who died after a tornado with winds of 130 mph (209 kph) struck in Arkansas. Another woman died in Arkansas when she lost control of her vehicle on an icy patch of an interstate. A Vermont man died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator that was running after the storm knocked out power at his house, state police said. Five people were killed in eastern Canada in highway crashes blamed on severe weather conditions. More than 5,500 flights were behind schedule by Monday evening, the majority of those in New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and Houston. And more than 300 flights were canceled, mostly in Chicago, Denver, Houston and Dallas, aviation data company FlightAware said. The number is in line with a typical travel day and much improved from Sunday's 700 cancellations. There are usually more than 30,000 daily flights in the United States. Delta Air Lines said a taxiway that may have frozen over was suspected in an accident at Detroit Metropolitan Airport: An Atlanta-bound jetliner slid onto the grass, but no one was hurt. The winter weather was far from nationwide, though. Record high temperatures in the 60s and 70s Fahrenheit (upper teens and low 20s Celsius) were reached in some Mid-Atlantic US states this weekend, but forecasts called for drops back to the mid-30s F (low single digits C). http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/89927.aspx
