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Hydro Ottawa: A message to our customers

April 7, 2023
Person with umbrella surveying ice storm damage, with fallen trees, hydro wires covered in ice, and parked along the street.

The following is a email notice from Hydro Ottawa to its customers across the city...

As we enter the holiday weekend, we wanted to take this opportunity to update our customers on the status of restoration efforts resulting from Wednesday’s freezing rain event, and to thank you for your continued patience and understanding.

Our crews continue to work on a 24/7 basis and are focused on restoring power across the city of Ottawa. As of 10:30 a.m. today, approximately 16,000 customers remain without power. Our expectation is for power to be restored to all customers by end of day Saturday, April 8.

We are restoring power to you in three waves. Yesterday’s restoration efforts (i.e., first wave) focused on restoring power to the majority of customers in 20 larger clusters in the following communities:

  • Casselman
  • Beacon Hill
  • Beaconwood
  • Central Beaconwood
  • Findlay Creek
  • The Glebe
  • Blossom Park
  • South Gloucester/Mitch Owens/Edwards
  • Carlingwood/Mckellar Park/ Woodroffe Lincoln Heights
  • Parkwood Hills/Fisher Heights
  • Braemar Park/Bel Air Heights
  • Kanata Lakes/Katimavik/Hazeldean/Richmond/Munster-Ashton
  • Rideau Glen/Pineglen
  • Bells Corners East

Today, restorations in this second wave, will focus on restoring power to any remaining customers in the above communities, and then transition to smaller outages. Our objective is to restore power to any and all outages in excess of 10 people. Of note, our efforts will be focused on: 

  • Copeland Park
  • Brookside - Briarbrook - Morgan’s Grant
  • Parkwood Hills - Stewart Farm
  • Greenbelt - Bells Corner

Tomorrow’s restoration efforts (final wave) will be focused on residual outages, clean-up and transitioning to individual outages, including customers with damage to their personal electrical equipment which may require Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) permitting.

The continuous accumulation of ice caused by Wednesday’s freezing rain event resulted in significant damage to trees - and to our equipment and wires. Restoration efforts have been slowed as a result of poor visibility and unsafe conditions, including falling trees, branches on overhead wires, and downed power lines. Today, high winds (up to 60km/h) are expected and this could impact the safety of crews and estimated restoration times and efforts.

We continue to respond to your emails and calls. We understand your frustration and are working to restore power as quickly and safely as possible. To this end, we have hired extra crews to be on hand today and throughout the weekend to support restoration efforts as required. Our full complement of 150 internal and external resources remain focused on restoring power to you. 

Hydro Ottawa will continue to post information regarding these ongoing outages on our websiteoutage map, and on our Twitter account

If you are without power and you do not see your neighbourhood reflected on our outage map, you can report this to us in two ways:

We thank you for your continued patience and understanding as we work to restore power to you on a priority basis.



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