Disaster Archives | Page 2 of 6 | Ice Storm 1998: Immersion in the Black and the Cold

Closed for business (Pascal Benny)

There was a factory in Saint-Jean—Formica—that reopened very soon after the ice storm. A few days after the storm—I can’t say how many—they brought in generators from the […]

Nature turns on it self (Louis Richer)

The hardest thing for me, and everyone else in St. Jean who lived through the ice storm, was the cracking sounds. You heard the sound of trees cracking […]

Nature turns on itself (François Guillet)

For us kids, it was enjoyable. It was a lot more enjoyable for us than it was for our parents. We went to the park just next door […]

Nature turns on itself (André Caillé)

Hydro provided electrical equipment to the farmers. They needed electricity, otherwise none of their equipment would work. They were at risk of losing their herds, literally losing all […]

Blackout: the power grid in disarray (Jean-Marc Parent)

I was lying in bed in our bedroom, which has a big window. We went to bed with no worries. At one point, we heard… It had been […]

Blackout: the power grid in disarray

During the first part of the week, if I remember correctly, a lot of customers lost power because of problems with the distribution system. During the second half […]

Chart on the evolution of the number of breakdowns in January 1998

The graph shows the evolution of the number of houses without electricity throughout the month of January 1998. This increases very rapidly between January 6 and 9, reaching […]

Spring cleaning!

The branches that were broken by the freezing rain were picked up by municipalities during spring time.

A big cleaning

The branches that were broken by the freezing rain were picked up by municipalities during spring time.

A song about the freezing storm

The song “Le reel des verglacés” was composed and performed by the Ménard-Tétrault family (Manon Tétrault, Sylvain Ménard and Mickaël, who’s 8 years old), living in Mont-Saint-Grégoire. They […]

Emergency state

The linesmen worked to reconnect the Haut-Richelieu hospital as quickly as possible.

Presence of military

It was the arrival of military, on the Séminaire Boulevard in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. We see in the background the cegep of Saint-Jean.