Blacked Out by Ice Storms, Montreal to Shut a 4th Day

This city, hit hard last week by ice storms, was due to remain shut for a fourth straight day today as the crisis deepened over a devastating blackout affecting 3 million people in eastern Canada.

In an unprecedented request, the provincial government-owned electrical utility Hydro-Quebec asked Sunday that schools, businesses, institutions and industry not open today in a large part of downtown Montreal and urban points west.

On Sunday, recent unseasonably mild weather was replaced by bitter cold, and residents of Ontario and Quebec provinces feared that pipes could freeze in homes that had been without power for several days.

Canada’s federal government mobilized 11,000 members of the armed forces to help communities across eastern Ontario and southern Quebec, including the federal capital, Ottawa, and Montreal. About 9,200 military men and women were already in the field Sunday.

At least 12 deaths in Canada have been blamed on the storms.

More than 4,000 Canadian and U.S. repair workers were scrambling to restore power to 1 million households and businesses, most of them in southern Quebec.

In Ontario, Ottawa was returning to normal, but 400,000 people in outlying areas remained without power as thousands of wooden poles needed to be replaced.

Across the border Sunday, helicopters searched for people needing aid in northern New York. Residents were told to put a giant H--for “help”--in their yards to attract the attention of airborne rescuers. National Guardsmen in New York cleared roads in the wake of ice storms that led to three deaths there. That brought to five the U.S. death toll from the storms.

Utilities estimated 230,000 homes and businesses had no electricity Sunday in Maine, with 24,500 blacked out in New Hampshire and 9,600 in Vermont. New York utilities estimated about 500,000 people remained without power.