Second death linked to Sandy in Ontario

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TORONTO, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Megastorm Sandy claimed a second life in Canada Wednesday when a utility worker repairing downed power lines was killed in southwestern Ontario, officials said.

Few details were released about the accident, which killed the worker on a residential street in Sarnia, near the shore of Lake Huron, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The vast storm system that came ashore in New Jersey after slamming the Caribbean and raking the U.S. East Coast also began hitting Southern Ontario late Monday with 50 mph winds and heavy rain.

Monday night, a woman in Toronto's west end was killed by a large store sign blown from its tower.

More than 40 people in the northeastern United States were killed, along with at least 67 on Caribbean Islands.

Meanwhile, southeastern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were still receiving rain from the post-tropical remnants of Sandy,

Early Wednesday, about 12,000 customers in Ontario and about 1,500 in New Brunswick were without power, the QMI Agency said. There were 1,750 outages in Nova Scotia, the CBC said.

The Toronto Hydro utility estimates the cost of repairs from the storm at $1 million, officials said.

Meanwhile, officials in the national capital of Ottawa, which largely escaped the storm's effects, announced Wednesday it was sending 12 utility workers and several repair trucks to Connecticut to help crews there.

The Toronto city council voted to offer any help the affected states needed, while the chief of the Toronto Transit Commission, Andy Byford, said he had contacted transit authorities in New York, where subway tunnels are flooded.

Byford told the Toronto Star he offered "whatever they need -- track, signal, structural, electrical expertise, vehicle engineers."