MONTREAK — Quebec is starting to recover after the remnants of Hurricane Debby pummeled several regions of the province with heavy rainfall on Friday, knocking power out and flooding roadways and basements.
Provincial police in the Mauricie region are searching for an 80-year-old pedestrian after a roadway collapsed and the man was swept into the Batiscan River late on Friday.
Emergency services were called to the scene in the municipality of Notre-Dame-de-Montauban at around 11:30 p.m., but police say they are conducting their search with drones because the area is currently inaccessible and dangerous.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Gregory Yang said the worst of the storm is over, with its remnants currently lingering over Anticosti Island in the province’s Cote-Nord region and tracking eastward. Only 10 to 15 millimetres of rain are expected.
Up to 173 mm of rain fell on the island of Montreal on Friday, shattering the previous record for the greatest quantity of rain to fall on the city in a single day, while the municipality of Lanoraie in the Lanaudiere region of the province received 221 mm.
The storm also brought widespread power outages to the province, with about 123,000 customers in the dark as of 11 a.m. on Saturday — down from the roughly 550,000 without electricity on Friday evening.