Toronto Hydro has successfully restored power to thousands of residents in the east end and downtown areas of the city following an outage that lasted over an hour on Wednesday night. Via a social media update on X, the utility confirmed that power was fully back on by 10:30 p.m. Toronto Hydro expressed regret for the inconvenience caused by the outage and thanked customers and the community for their patience during the restoration process.
Reports from the outage map indicated that over 31,000 customers were impacted by the outage as of 9:40 p.m., with Toronto Hydro attributing the widespread disruption to a loss of supply from Hydro One. The outage also had repercussions on the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), affecting elevators and escalators at several Line 2 subway stations at one point.
In response to the power failure, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) issued a statement urging immediate evacuation of multiple buildings, including Eric Palin Hall, Sally Horsfall Eaton Centre for Studies in Community Health, Rogers Communications Centre, Pitman Hall, International Living/Learning Centre, and Kerr Hall at the Toronto Campus. TMU emphasized the need for evacuation due to potential risks to safety systems like fire detection and sprinklers.
TMU informed that all ongoing classes, labs, and exams were to be paused during the evacuation, with employees advised to either relocate to an alternative working space or take a break nearby until power was fully restored.