There were still a handful of customers without power late Saturday afternoon following a fire at a vault controlled by Hydro One overnight, as the utility was busy working to get things back in motion.
The fire started at the Finch Transmission Station near Finch Ave. and Highway 400 just after midnight. Toronto Hydro spokesperson Tori Gass confirmed to NEWSTALK1010 Saturday morning 35,000 customers were impacted by the fire.
"As we get our power from Hydro One, that has caused the outage to our customers."
We've done all the switching/rerouting we could, & restored all but the remaining 1,000 customers (down from 35,000). The repairs now have to be done by Hydro One, so it's best to check with them directly. Sorry you're still without power, we know this is very frustrating.
— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 28, 2018
Gass also confirmed that the number of customers affected was down significantly late Saturday morning, to just 7,000, thanks to some creative manoeuvres by the utility company. An additional 4,000 were back on the grid by 2 p.m. with 2,000 more getting their electricity back by 3:45 p.m.
After that, it was all up to Hydro One - which was able to get on scene after Toronto Fire gave the all-clear.
"The bulk of this repair, Hydro One needs to do the repair on their side first," Gass said. "We really can't start anything on our side until we have power coming back in to the city."
"We're really relying on them to take the lead on this. It's their scene. And once they've determined the situation and how long it's going to take for them to restore the power to Toronto Hydro, then we'll have a better idea of how soon we can get power to our customers," she added.
"At this point, [we're] still doing damage assessment," added Hydro One's Tiziana Baccega Rosa, earlier Saturday afternoon. "That will dictate how we go about making the repairs."
But Baccega Rosa called the NEWSTALK1010 newsroom with an update just before 6 p.m., saying two of four transformers impacted by the blaze were not damaged. As a result, they were in the process of turning the power back on for the remaining customers. She anticipated everyone would be back on the grid by 7:15 p.m.
- With files from Jackie Rosen