Thousands of Quebec residents still without power 6 days after ice storm

The latest:

• As of 12:30 p.m.ET Tuesday, more than 19,000 Hydro-Qubeccustomers were still without power.
• Hydro-Qubec says most households will have power back within 24 hours.
• More than 1 million customers have regained powerfrom the peak of 1.1 million on Thursday.
• 2 people have died, oneafter being hit by a falling branch, the other after using a generator in a garage.
• 180 people in Montreal have beentreated forcarbon monoxide poisoning.
• The city of Montreal is starting to issue parking tickets on residential streets again.
• If the power or data on your device is low, get your storm updates onCBC Lite. It's our low-bandwidth, text-only website.
• To keep an eye on the outages,click here.

Hydro-Qubecsaysit is working to restore power to all of its customers by the end of the day, but it isn't making any promises.

More than 19,000 customers remained without power across the province as of 12:30p.m. ET Tuesday, with the majority in the Montreal,Outaouais, Montrgieand Laval regions.

Daniel Miguez de Luca, a Pierrefonds resident inMontreal's West Island, saidhe and his family are trying to keep spirits up as they endure theirfifth day in the dark.

"It'sbeen a littlestressful and it's beencold, so we're all bundledup in the house," he said.

De Luca says they're trying to make the best of a bad situation by spending time together.

"We had a little camp-out in the living room last night and we're allhavingless screen time.I read a book last night," he laughed.

Robert Quinn, another Pierrefonds resident, is less optimistic about the situation. With one generator for the house, he saidhe can't wait for his power to be restored.

"It's rough. Iwould like to take a shower," he said. "Five days without a shower is not very fun."

On Monday, the public utility brought in seven additional crews to address the power outages, with 780 workers performing repairs in Montreal, Maxime Nadeau,director of energy system control at Hydro-Qubec, told Radio-Canada's Tout un matin.

He said the higher number ofpower outages remaining in the West Island is due tothe area having a greater amount of outages initially and the company restoring power across the territory at similar rates. The West Islandhad almost 500,000 power outages at the peakof the storm, compared to about 122,000 in the east, he said.

"There may still be cases and interventions to do with master electricians, but we're very confident that we'll complete most of the majorwork today," Nadeau said.

He added that customers seeking compensation for enduring food or other lossesduring a power outage will have to contact their insurance companies.

No planning ahead, says Montreal West Island mayor

Dollard-des-Ormeaux Mayor Alex Bottauscisaid18,500 households lost electricity at the peak of the stormlast week.

Several hundreds of customers in the area were still without power as of Monday night.

He said the public utility warned him the remaining case are more complicated to fix since crewsneedto install poles, transformers, move fences andtake downshedsin residents' yards before focusing on restoring power.

Bottausci said he's frustrated that a corporation"that is worth billions of dollars" hasn't seemed to plan for these kinds of events.

"What's the risk management that they've tried to calculate behind this?" he said.

He said he plans onspeaking with Hydro-Qubec and the city of Montreal to discusshow to minimize damage in the event of another storm.

Bottausci said he has no issue with being told to plant more trees to protect the city's canopies, "however, we have to look at our hydro passage anddistribution lines and realistically take tolland do a calculation and think of what we should be doing along these corridors."

Rgis Tellier, the utility's vice-president of operations and maintenance, told reporters Sunday morning that power wasrestored to over 90 per cent of the more than one million customers who lost electricity including 180,000 who saw the lights come back on Saturday.

Tellier said most of Quebec's remaining outages affect only a handful of customers, noting Hydro workers are reconnecting fewer customers even though they're working at the same pace.

Hydro-Qubec is also asking the public to stay away frompower lines on the groundor any other objects connected to the power system, and call 911 to have the area secured.

Officials warn against using fuel-burning appliances inside after reports of that dozens of people dealt with carbon monoxide poisoning. Montreal public health said Sunday that 180 cases have been reported at emergency rooms in the city since Wednesday, including more than 50 reported since Saturday.