300,000 people are still without power in Toronto in the aftermath of a major ice storm that's crippled the the city. Despite the efforts of Hydro workers, continued freezing rain and drizzle throughout the day has brought down additional power lines and trees throughout the city, leaving some additional 50,000 people without service since this morning's estimate that 250,000 were suffering through outages.
Toronto Hydro has yet to update its outages map, but we know that the highway 401 corridor and much of Leaside have been hit particularly hard. Sunnybrook and Toronto East General hospitals also remain without power from the grid, but are running on backup generators. Mayor Ford estimates that it will take 10-12 hours to get power restored at these locations. Meanwhile, many homes without power will have to wait days before service is restored.
The transportation story hasn't improved much either. There's no subway service on the Sheppard Line, as well as at Victoria Park, Islington, Yorkdale, York Mills, and North York Centre stations. The Scarborough RT and all streetcar service also remains suspended with shuttle buses running every 15-30 minutes.
The Toronto District School Board has just announced that all of its facilities will be closed on Monday in the wake of the storm. And if you're currently without power and getting cold, please note that the City has opened a number of warming stations around Toronto.
The Mayor has yet to declare a state of emergency, but with temperatures expected to dip overnight and increasing winds forecast in the coming days, officials are warning that the situation could still worsen.
Check out photos of the storm and its aftermath here .
Do you have your photos of the storm? Tag them on Instagram with #iceTO or add them directly to our Toronto Ice Storm gallery.
Lead photo by Greg Stacey in the blogTO Flickr pool.
by Derek Flack via blogTO
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