Hundreds of thousands of households in the Quebec remained without electricity today, two days after the passage of an ice storm from eastern Canada, which caused the death of two people and a lot of material damage mainly in Montreal.

“We have restored electricity to just over a third of residents affected by the outages caused by the ice storm,” announced electricity provider Hydro-Québec.

Nearly 630,000 households remained in the dark by midday today, compared to 1.1 million when the power outages were at their peak.

“We are very satisfied with Hydro-Québec’s handling of the crisis,” Quebec Economy and Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said at a news conference today.

The company estimates it is able to restore power to the majority of customers by late Friday night.

“We know that for some customers this will last until Sunday, maybe even Monday,” said Regis Tellier, a spokesman for Hydro-Québec.

“More favorable weather conditions” later in the day are expected to allow “the acceleration of service restoration,” he added.

By then, the city of Montreal, which recorded nearly half of the outages, opened six temporary emergency shelters where residents without power spent the night.

These centers remained accessible during the day to those who wanted to warm up on the first day of the Easter long weekend.

Authorities have recorded two deaths since the storm began in Canada: an eastern Ontario resident was killed by a falling tree on Wednesday and a 60-year-old man in Quebec was fatally injured by a branch while trying to clear his garden on Thursday.

Hundreds of Montreal workers were still working in the area today, mostly in parks where many branches were strewn on the ground after they collapsed under the weight of the ice.

With the temperature nearing 1 degree Celsius, the ice melted but gusts of wind shook the trees, with the risk of more falls. Authorities continued to advise residents to stay away from power lines.

The storm hit Quebec and the Ontario, Canada’s two most populous provinces. It is the biggest power outage in Quebec since the 1998 ice crisis, which plunged the province into chaos for several weeks.