Ice storm means dark Christmas for tens of thousands

Christmas is a time for family and get-togethers, but for tens of thousands of Canadians this morning, it also means scrambling to find warmth - sometimes with dangerous results - following an ice storm that has knocked out power for days.

Toronto Hydro said early Wednesday that about 70,000 customers were still without electricity, from a high of about 300,000.

'We've restored all critical customers (TTC, Water services etc), and crews continue to repair priority feeders, which will restore the largest groups of customers at one time,' the utility said in a release. 'Crews will then respond to more localized outages, which affect streets or individual homes.'

Crews are still working to restore power in parts of southern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The ice storm slammed into southern Ontario last weekend before moving east and causing havoc in the Maritimes.

People desperate to keep warm are also engaging in some dangerous practices.

Early Christmas morning, two children and two adults in east-end Toronto were taken to hospital to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning, reportedly after the occupants of an apartment were burning coal to keep warm.

The incident follows the death of two people in Newcastle, Ont., after carbon monoxide apparently seeped into their home from the garage where a gas generator was in use, prompting authorities to caution people against using generators, charcoal stoves and barbecues indoors.

The ice storm downed power lines, left trees and roads covered in ice and caused widespread travel delays.

Power Stream, the utility that serves Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan, among other Ontario communities, reported 12,100 customers were still down by early Wednesday. Veridian Connections, which serves the Pickering and Ajax areas east of Toronto, said about 4,000 customers were still affected.

Hydro One, which serves 1.3 million customers in Ontario including Guelph, Peterborough and Walkerton, had 31,000 customers still without power.

In other parts of Canada:

Hydro Quebec said some 28,000 customers were without electricity, primarily in the Eastern Townships. In New Brunswick, just under 29,000 customers were still in the dark, with about half of them in the Rothesay area. In Nova Scotia, the number of outages had dropped to fewer than 300 by early Wednesday.

Toronto Hydro says it is receiving assistance from other utilities, including Hydro Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie PUC, Enwin (Windsor) and Manitoba Hydro.

On Tuesday, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne reacted to criticism that power wasn't being restored quickly enough by saying: 'So far the progress we're seeing in affected communities is very encouraging.'

'We're three days into this and tens of thousands of people who didn't have power - hundreds of thousands of people who didn't have power - have power now and the progress has been remarkable.'

Many customers, however, could be without electricity until the weekend, and Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines said the situation could get worse.

'I can honestly say I've never paid so much attention to the weather forecast before in my life until I did this week,' he said Tuesday morning.

Haines said there was still a risk of more outages if the weather worsened.

'It continues to be one of my big concerns that if we see another weather event with trees that continue to be laden with ice and snow, that we'll get additional damage,' he said Tuesday.

The utility put out a call on Twitter asking anyone who runs a restaurant that will be open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to contact them as the crews working to restore power need food.

The CBC's Catherine Harrop said from Fredericton Tuesday morning that N.B. Power was facing a tough job.

'N.B. Power is saying they're really struggling because, of course, the crews have to work on ice and they're working with those who can take down tree limbs at the same time as the linemen are working on the power lines. So it's a pretty tricky situation.'

With files from The Canadian Press