TORONTO, Jan 16: A utility company was working on Friday to restore power to a residential district near downtown Toronto after an outage left about 100,000 people without electricity during a bitter cold wave.

Toronto Hydro spokesman Paul Reesor said on Friday afternoon that it had restored power to about half of the homes and businesses left in the dark and cold after a broken water main flooded a power station on Thursday night.

“Because of the significant water damage to some equipment, that equipment had to be dried out before being used, delaying the power restoration process,” said Reesor.

The outage left many scrambling for extra blankets and clothing to keep warm as overnight temperatures plummeted to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

“At midnight, I went out to see if anybody had their lights on but the streets were pitch black. I saw just a couple of taxis and police cars slowly patrolling the neighbourhood. There was this very eerie feeling,” said Karri Ojanen, whose home lost electricity at about 10pm on Thursday night.

“I went back home, made some hot tea, had lots of candles burning, got all our extra blankets out and used the gas oven for a little while for heat. The temperature in our house kept going down, and by the time we left for work on Friday morning, still with no power on, it was only about 5 degrees Celsius in the bedroom,” said Ojanen.

The outage caused problems during the Friday morning rush hour after several subway stations were closed and some traffic lights stopped working. Extra buses were used to shuttle commuters to work.

“I am so cold. I’m not going to thaw until next week,” said Jeff Sanford, who was forced to walk 45 minutes to work due to the subway closures, in minus 17 degree Celsius temperatures.

Toronto was not the only city left in the cold and dark. Cities in Atlantic Canada also experienced power outages, leaving more than 1,500 customers without power in Nova Scotia and over 1,400 homes and businesses in New Brunswick in the cold on one of the coldest days of the year.—AP