toronto outage

Some people in Toronto have been without power for well over 24 hours after flood

After Tuesday's brief, but devastating rainfall flooded swaths of Toronto and knocked out power across the city, thousands of residents are still coping without electricity and desperately counting down the hours until a potential resolution.

A jaw-dropping 167,000 were affected by interruptions that started around 1 p.m. yesterday, with TorontoHydro telling residents more than 24 hours later that it is still responding to scattered outages, which were caused by a drowned transmission stations operated by provincial provider Hydro One.

As crews work away on the one station still experiencing difficulties, customers are getting extremely impatient with the service issue, citing either intermittent outages or a consistent loss of power amid humidex values of close to 30 C.

The TorontoHydro tag on social media is riddled with grievances from those who find it quite unreasonable that after more than a full day, they and those in their neighbourhood are still unable to perform necessary daily tasks because of how long it's taking to get back things up and running.

Those in the Bloor and Islington area seems to be struggling the most, while outage maps show some 2,000 households and businesses still in the dark at the time of publication.

Posts like one reading "24 hours without power in this heat is absolutely unacceptable! How can we not figure this out yet?! ETA yesterday at 1:36 a.m. now pushed to 6 p.m. the following day. Incredibly frustrating! WHAT IS THE DELAY?," are not uncommon on X this afternoon as people attempt to get the attention of TorontoHydro, Hydro One or various politicians.

"The power still off in my area and it's 10:40 pm, it's humid (no AC), food is spoiling, phone slowly dying. It's fucked up and inexcusable to be out this long, Toronto Hydro hurry up!!!

"About 2,000 households are without power for 27 hours straight! No power means no water, no internet, and no way to preserve, cook or reheat food for kids. Did I mention no A/C in 30 degree heat?" one reader who lives near Islington wrote to blogTO Wednesday afternoon.

"The estimated time to repair the outage has been delayed five times today and we still don't know how are we going to survive the evening."

Others in Parkdale, Liberty Village, near Kipling Station and in other corners also had yet to see service return to normal as of mid-afternoon.

"We’re continuing to work with Hydro One to restore all remaining customers as quickly and safely as possible," TorontoHydro wrote in its latest update on X around 1:30 p.m. 

"As Hydro One continues their repair efforts, some customers can expect to experience intermittent outages as the impacted station is brought back online in stages."

Hydro One, meanwhile, has made numerous posts about "making progress" on remediation efforts since yesterday evening, advising those with electricity to conserve power where possible to reduce strain on the grid.

The station servicing parts of the west end is expected to be gradually brought online as the day progresses.

Lead photo by

Reimar/Shutterstock


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