Power outage affects 88,000 in Quebec’s Montérégie region after bus hits pylon | CBC News

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.

Police say two people on the bus and another in the car were injured.

At its peak the outage affected approximately 88,000 customers. There are just over 3,550 who are still without power as of Sunday evening. 

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. 

“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.