Approximately 254,000 customers still without power as crews continue work through the night

TORONTO, Dec. 23, 2013 /CNW/ - Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited (Toronto Hydro) is reporting that approximately 254,000 customers are without power, which is down from the 300,000 impacted during the height of the storm.

Tree damage is extensive and worse than originally anticipated. It is slowing down the pace of restoration. Crews are discovering multiple limbs on power lines and in some cases, trees are preventing crews from accessing roadways. To help accelerate restoration, the City of Toronto is lending additional forestry crews.

Crews continue to work on public safety calls first, and will then work to restore priority customers such as hospitals, city services and TTC.  All available resources have been deployed and crews are working as quickly as possible to restore power.

The nature of this type of restoration work is challenging. We respectfully ask for your continued patience.

Customers may continue to experience difficulty reporting outages as a result of the volume of calls.  At this time, Toronto Hydro asks that people keep the lines available for emergency calls related to downed wires only.

If you spot a downed wire, please stay back (at least 10 feet) and report it to Toronto Hydro's operations centre at 416-542-8000.

For more information about household items to have on hand during a lengthy outage, please visit torontohydro.com/poweroutage

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SOURCE: Toronto Hydro Corporation

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Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited.
C: 416-903-6845