NEXT
Freezing rain has been falling since Monday, and more is coming. Towers are falling across the 735 kV system, and the lines that feed the island of Montreal are going one by one. You're running the island's crisis cell for the next sixty hours: crews, critical sites, and the city's emergency decisions.
The worst moment is already on the calendar, though you don't know it: at 12:38 PM on Friday, both of Montreal's filtration plants, Atwater and Des Baillets, will lose power. Neither has backup generation. The island will be down to a single line, every bridge closed by falling ice, and evacuation impossible.
You have six line crews, two fuel trucks, two portable generators, two police teams, and help from outside and from the army if you ask in time.
Your first move: while it's quiet, ask for outside crews and the army; both take hours. Then make downed wires safe as they come in.
Choose your level. A higher level adds objectives.
A scenario set in the January 1998 ice storm in southern Quebec and eastern Ontario. Real place and facility names are used for orientation. People and the moment-to-moment events are dramatized and do not describe how Hydro-Québec or the City of Montreal actually operated; not affiliated with them. The map is schematic, not to scale. Not utility operations or emergency-management advice.