Montreal woman died of hypothermia during January power outage, coroner says
Quebec outage death: an 87-year-old Montreal woman died of hypothermia See the coroner’s findings and what the prolonged blackout revealed
A Quebec coroner has confirmed that an 87yearold Montreal woman died of hypothermia during a prolonged January power outage, according to a report released on Sept. 29.
The report says Sheila Padmore was without electricity for nearly 36 hours in her apartment as temperatures fell between 10 C and 20 C. Police found her during a wellness check on Jan. 25, and she was later taken to hospital, where her body temperature was measured at 24.5 C. She was pronounced dead in the early hours of Jan. 26.
The outage began after an equipment failure at HydroQuébec's Hampstead substation and affected more than 20,000 customers in Montreal, Montreal West and Côte SaintLuc. A separate coroner investigation is still ongoing into the death of another woman found dead in Montreal West during the same outage.