Heavy winds uprooted trees across the Greater Toronto Area, mangled a construction crane in Mississauga and left thousands of Toronto Hydro customers without power.
A wind warning was issued for the entire GTA and parts of Southern Ontario amid blustery conditions that could see wind gusts top 90 kilometres an hour. The warning was lifted at around 8 p.m.
At 3:30 p.m., Toronto Fire said that it had responded to 41 weather-related incidents with the majority of those calls for downed wires or transformer fires.
Meanwhile, in Mississauga a badly mangled crane has been reported at a construction site near Erin Mills Parkway and Eglinton Avenue West. No injuries have been reported as a result and Mississauga Fire Chief Tim Beckett tells lintelligencer that the under construction building next to the crane is not believed to be at risk. Beckett said that the Ministry of Labour has been called in and a structural engineer will be brought to the scene to assess for damage to an underground parking lot.
“We are kind of concerned a little bit about the structural collapse in that zone,” he said.
Outages spread across city
Approximately 21,400 Toronto Hydro customers were in the dark at the height of the wind storm and another 15,000 Alectra Utilities customers were also without power in the Mississauga and Hamilton areas. About 10,000 Alectra Utilities customers were without power in Vaughan but service was restored to that area at around 4 p.m. Alectra Utilities said it expects to fully restore power by later tonight or early Thursday morning.
The outages in Toronto are scattered across the entire city, mostly as a result of downed wires.
Toronto Hydro says that it did bring in extra crews in anticipation of the storm but crews are prioritizing calls where there is a public safety risk for now.
