MONTREAL, Dec 23 — More than 430,000 households in Ontario and Quebec are without electricity after a snow and ice storm moving through eastern Canada snapped power lines, threatening to leave some customers in the dark until Christmas.

More than 300 flights were cancelled at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, according to the airport’s website, with dozens more scrapped in Ottawa and Montreal. Environment Canada said winds in the Toronto area may pick up to as much as 40 kilometres (25 miles) an hour after the storm left up to 30 millimetres (1.2 inches) of ice. The forecast for the Montreal area calls for as much as 30 centimetres (12 inches) of snow and ice pellets.

In Toronto, Canada’s biggest city, more than 250,000 Toronto Hydro customers are without power and as long as 72 hours may be required to restore service, the utility said in a statement on its website. All streetcar service in the city -- on what is traditionally one of the year’s busiest shopping days -- has been suspended due to icy power lines, the Toronto Transit Commission said in a Twitter message.

“This is truly one of the worst ice storms we’ve seen here in Ontario,” Toronto Hydro Chief Executive Officer Anthony Haines said this morning at a press briefing.

Toronto’s East General and Sunnybrook hospitals are operating on emergency generators, as is the city’s water- pumping system, Haines said.

Replacing poles

“The top priority now is the hospitals,” Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said at a televised press conference this afternoon.

Not only are winds expected to get stronger, which would bring down more power lines, but ice is building up on some transformers, which could trigger “catastrophic” equipment failures, Haines said.

“It’s not just a matter of going in and restoring the power lines,” he said. “Now we’re going to be replacing poles, replacing transformers at the top of some of these poles, so it’s going to be a major event that is going to last days for us to be able to get the power back up.”

Ford said it’s too early to declare a state of emergency.

“If it gets really bad in the next 24 hours we could have a state of emergency but I don’t want to say that right now,” he said. “We’re not in that situation quite yet.”

Fatal accidents

Hydro One, another Ontario-based utility, said in a message on Twitter that about 141,000 customers are without power. About 46,000 Hydro-Quebec customers are without electricity, the Montreal-based company said on its website. Icy conditions may have played a role in at least three fatal accidents on Quebec roads, Canadian Press news agency reported.

Further east, about 2,900 customers in the province of New Brunswick are without power, New Brunswick Power said.

Air Canada, the country’s biggest airline, said today it’s waiving fees to allow passengers to change flights, space permitting, as the storms impact operations. Via Rail, the country’s passenger rail operator, said it’s not expecting any cancellations, though delays are likely. — Bloomberg