People make their way around a fallen tree following an ice storm in Montreal, Thursday, April 6, 2023. More than one million customers in Quebec and Ontario were without power Wednesday after a messy mix of freezing rain and thunderstorms pummeled parts of both provinces.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
MONTREAL – Police say the third person to die in a vicious ice storm was a man in Saint-Joseph-Du-Lac, Que., who was running a generator in his garage.
Insp. Jean Philippe Labbé says the man’s wife found him unconscious in the garage, and the 75-year-old died after being taken to hospital in Ste-Eustache.
He says firefighters determined carbon monoxide levels in the garage were 20 times the norm.
Earlier, Premier Francois Legault told reporters that a man in Ste-Eustache had died after bringing his barbecue indoors, but Labbé says that was a misunderstanding.
Montreal’s health authority said dozens of people suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning after using outdoor appliances inside during the blackout caused by Wednesday’s ice storm.
Officials say they received more than 60 reports of CO poisoning over the course of several hours today, while emergency rooms were at 200 per cent capacity.
Legault announced the latest death while touring Les Coteaux, Que., where another man died while attempting to cut down tree branches on his property on Thursday.
Provincial police have said that man was struck by one of the branches and died at the scene.
Meanwhile, Ontario Provincial Police confirmed today that another man died on Wednesday after he was struck by a falling tree branch at his home in South Stormont, Ont.
Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power two days after the storm that left parts of Quebec and Ontario coated in ice, with the vast majority of the active outages reported in Quebec.
