Jacinthe Lemire describes 70-hour Hydro Quebec Panne in Sainte-Brigitte-des-Saults

Jacinthe Lemire says hydro quebec panne has become part of life at her country home in Sainte-Brigitte-des-Saults, where she and André Brière have faced repeated outages since moving there eight years ago. Their address is among the 500 most affected in Quebec since the start of the year.

One outage at their rang Saint-Patrice home lasted 35 hours between March 11 and March 13. In March, some residences in the village were without electricity for nearly 70 hours in less than a week, in a community of fewer than 800 inhabitants.

Sainte-Brigitte-des-Saults outages

Lemire said the interruptions have even made the couple think about leaving. “On a vendu notre belle maison neuve pour s’en venir ici.” She also said, “Maudit qu’elle avait raison,” referring to a neighbor who had told them to buy a generator.

The couple has had to improvise at home during outages. Brière built a device to draw water from a stream on their property, and he said, “C’est de l’ouvrage en vieillissant.”

Mathilde Potvin on March outages

Mathilde Potvin, the municipality’s director general, said the village experiences repeated long interruptions across its territory. “Des épisodes prolongés comme ceux de mars, on en a au moins un à deux par année à la grandeur du territoire,” she said.

In 2026, the municipality adopted an emergency policy for outages lasting 10 hours or more. Potvin said, “On ouvre le centre communautaire après 10 heures consécutives de panne. On permet aux citoyens de venir se réchauffer, charger le”

Community center response

The community centre opens after 10 consecutive hours without power so residents can warm up and charge devices. For households in Sainte-Brigitte-des-Saults, that leaves a clear threshold: once an outage stretches past 10 hours, the village shifts from waiting to managing a longer interruption.