Toronto Icestorm of 2013

[GenerationW]

What a difference a day makes! Tuesday night was the longest, coldest night of my life, and Wednesday turned to pure joy when the power returned at dinner time.

I hope no one ever has to go through that again, and I really hope those who are still suffering get the relief they deserve ASAP.

 

[W. K. Lis]

One problem the TTC had was that the ice storm happened Sunday morning, when the streetcars were mostly on Blue Night schedules. That meant streetcars on only a couple of routes and at 15 or 30 minute headways. If it happened during the day, the streetcars would have been more frequent and would have helped by clearing the ice build-up as they passed under.

 

[JWBF]

Power finally at 6:40 am this morning, Christmas day dinner was out of cans and warmed with tea light candles. The final total of food lost is on ongoing.

 

[salsa]

Some people will not be getting power until new year's.

 

[JWBF]

Yes, let us not forget these people still dealing with the fallout of Ford's folly.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Today there was freshly fallen snow... on top the ice that is still on the trees and everything else. That means more broken branches and power disruptions.

The forecast calls for above freezing temperature (+3°) by this weekend. Hopefully, that will melt the ice on the branches. However, some of those branches are being held up by the ice, so even the higher temperatures may let the weakened branches give up and fall.

 

[Fresco]

What a difference a day makes! Tuesday night was the longest, coldest night of my life, and Wednesday turned to pure joy when the power returned at dinner time.

I hope no one ever has to go through that again, and I really hope those who are still suffering get the relief they deserve ASAP

Goes to show how modern society has to come to rely on electricity. Now imagine a power failure that lasts for 30 days or so. It would be a complete breakdown of society, complete with riots, murders and plunder

 

[Voltz]

Still no power on my side street in Scarborough, getting by fine elsewhere,

All the surrounding streets have power and it couldn't take more than a few minutes to get my street back on as there is no damage to the wires.

 

[Ex-Montreal Girl]

I'm doing a survey on high-rise emergency preparedness for my master's project and this would be an ideal time to participate in the survey!!! It only takes between 5-8 minutes, but I would be sincerely grateful if you can help me out and do it!

http://fluidsurveys.com/s/preparedness/

Hi. I will do your survey but would love to know more. I am on my condo board and, all things considered, we fared very well, despite the fact that previous boards put NOTHING in place. The current board, 4/5 members were elected or appointed this year, scrambled since losing power at 4 a.m. on Sunday. It came back Tuesday afternoon. Could you please message me with contact info? We will be nailing down a contingency plan very soon and any input you can give would be great. Thanks!

 

[Ex-Montreal Girl]

It is now time to push and push for the wholesale burial of our electrical infrastructure. Montreal and most of Quebec did the same after the 1998 ice storm and we should follow their lead.

There is absolutely no reason aside from typical Toronto penny-pinching and myopia why the bulk of our critical electrical infrastructure is dangling above rotting wooden poles. Not only is it disgusting to look at, but it is clearly a public safety issue.

I haven't had power since Sunday at 3AM. Our house is freezing cold, no fireplace, no gas stoves.. We have no way of doing anything. Thank God for friends and neighbours nearby who still have power, otherwise I'd be worried.

For the record, the older parts of Montreal started burying their wires during the Jean Drapeau regime, well before the ice storm. He thought them unsightly, just like he hated street furniture. Montreal was walloped in 1998 mostly because the main transmission lines into the city from James Bay (or wherever) were knocked out.

 

[Electrify]

Power went out at my apartment in Richmond Hill early Sunday morning. On my way to work I saw a tree toppled right over some power lines. Ended up staying an extra hour (9 hours total) because the grocery store I work at was the only one with power in the area, and when I came home that evening the trees had not been tended to. I was optimistic that the power would be back on the next day, but was not that lucky.

I don't even know if I have power now actually. I had to get downtown to catch a train to London and when I left Monday afternoon there was still no power.

Oh, and when I left, the trees were still toppled over the power lines.

 

[James]

It looks like the progress in Scarborough and North York are slow but improving. According to the Toronto Hydro outage map, the majority of those areas are still pretty much without power. I'm surprised to see that the corridor along the 401 between the Allen Road and the DVP to be making the least amount of progress. There doesn't seem to be much improvement at all over the course of the last day or so. The Avenue Road stretch between Lawrence and Wilson (Ledbury Park/Bedford Park) area has been more or less unchanged over the past few days.

 

[Kat_YYZ]

They still haven't fixed the traffic lights at Don Mills and Eglinton. Almost all the other lights in that immediate area are working (street lamps just west up till Leslie aren't, but other street lamps and traffic lights are).

The things is, it's very hard to treat this intersection as a 4-way stop, because it has 3 lanes of straight-thru traffic in each direction, plus a left-turn lane in each direction, and even a right-turn lane on a couple of sides. That's more than 16 lanes of traffic. Not everyone is pulling up to the stop line at the same time, so it's much more complicated than the single-lane scenario that you would find at an actual 4-way stop sign intersection. Ironically, if it were rush hour, it'd be easier as all three cars would pull up to make their stop at the same time, but when it's less busy, people are arriving to the line at all different times.

The eastbound & westbound cars going straight-thru want to go at the same time, since they don't affect each other, but then when do the left-turn people get to go? Then add to that pedestrians trying to figure out when it's their turn. It's a total mess.

I wonder if traffic lights couldn't be powered by a combination of solar power and electricity and/or back-up battery. The new technology with LED light bulbs means they are supposed to be quite bright and last long while using much less power than regular bulbs or even CFLs. The traffic lights are up high exposed to the solar light all day, they could use that power and maybe store it up as well, like those parking machines with the solar panels on top. And maybe some kind of battery could back them up.

 

[W. K. Lis]

They still haven't fixed the traffic lights at Don Mills and Eglinton. Almost all the other lights in that immediate area are working (street lamps just west up till Leslie aren't, but other street lamps and traffic lights are).

The things is, it's very hard to treat this intersection as a 4-way stop, because it has 3 lanes of straight-thru traffic in each direction, plus a left-turn lane in each direction, and even a right-turn lane on a couple of sides. That's more than 16 lanes of traffic. Not everyone is pulling up to the stop line at the same time, so it's much more complicated than the single-lane scenario that you would find at an actual 4-way stop sign intersection. Ironically, if it were rush hour, it'd be easier as all three cars would pull up to make their stop at the same time, but when it's less busy, people are arriving to the line at all different times.

The eastbound & westbound cars going straight-thru want to go at the same time, since they don't affect each other, but then when do the left-turn people get to go? Then add to that pedestrians trying to figure out when it's their turn. It's a total mess.

I wonder if traffic lights couldn't be powered by a combination of solar power and electricity and/or back-up battery. The new technology with LED light bulbs means they are supposed to be quite bright and last long while using much less power than regular bulbs or even CFLs. The traffic lights are up high exposed to the solar light all day, they could use that power and maybe store it up as well, like those parking machines with the solar panels on top. And maybe some kind of battery could back them up.

No police office on point duty at that intersection? Maybe too busy writing parking tickets.

 

[James]

...
The things is, it's very hard to treat this intersection as a 4-way stop, because it has 3 lanes of straight-thru traffic in each direction, plus a left-turn lane in each direction, and even a right-turn lane on a couple of sides. That's more than 16 lanes of traffic. Not everyone is pulling up to the stop line at the same time, so it's much more complicated than the single-lane scenario that you would find at an actual 4-way stop sign intersection. Ironically, if it were rush hour, it'd be easier as all three cars would pull up to make their stop at the same time, but when it's less busy, people are arriving to the line at all different times.

The eastbound & westbound cars going straight-thru want to go at the same time, since they don't affect each other, but then when do the left-turn people get to go? Then add to that pedestrians trying to figure out when it's their turn. It's a total mess.
...

This is pretty much the same dilemma at every major intersection. 3 lanes of traffic with a 4-way stop really requires people to work together in clumps, instead of the traditional "first at the stop sign" rule. I've certainly experienced the challenge first hand, trying to manoever across the major local arteries earlier this week.