A major outage has occurred in Lévis: the Valero refinery in Saint-Romuald is without power

More than 37,000 Hydro-Quebec customers lost power Wednesday morning.

There was also a Valero refinery in Saint-Romuald. As a precautionary measure, all production units at the Jean-Gaulin refinery, located in the chemin des les, have been closed.

As expected in such a situation, the refinery’s emergency systems were triggered. This resulted in a higher than normal firing at the flare. […] “The refinery’s emergency coordination center was quickly mobilized and the situation is under control,” the company said in a press release.

The areas affected were San Nicolas, San Romuald and downtown Lévis. The interruption lasted about thirty minutes.

Hydro-Quebec spokeswoman Annie Bowden said the outage was caused by a break in an underground cable. “It’s a contractor who hooked up an underground cable during an excavation near Levis,” she says.

Shortly after noon on Wednesday, power was restored to most residents of Levis.

At about 2 p.m., 678 customers were still without it due to three malfunctions.