Residents of an Etobicoke neighbourhood who lost power for more than 36 hours amid a global pandemic that has many working from home will be compensated, Toronto Hydro has announced.

The outage, which resulted from an underground cable fault, left more than 700 customers near Bloor Street and The East Mall without power late on April 5.

Power was initially supposed to be restored by 4 p.m. on April 6 but Toronto Hydro said that it ran into “unexpected issues” and it didn’t actually end up being restored until the next morning.

In a message posted to Twitter on Wednesday morning, Toronto Hydro said that it will provide any customer affected by the outage with a $100 grocery gift card as “a gesture of goodwill.”

“We know that many affected customers had food in their fridges and freezers that will now need to be replaced,” the utility said. “In light of the significant length of the outage and its impact on customers during these difficult times, we're offering affected customers a $100 gift card to Loblaws, Walmart or Sobeys.”

Customers have to fill out an application available on Toronto Hydro’s website to receive the gift card.