Well, that was fast.

It took one day for Toronto Hydro to climb down from its decision to stop flying the Canadian flag at some of its facilities, after my column about it was posted to thestar.com on Thursday night.

Hydro had claimed that hoisting and lowering the national ensign was an “occupational health and safety hazard” to its employees, which had Star readers howling in outrage.

I got dozens of emails from people who were aghast at Hydro’s tone-deafness to the symbolism associated with flying the flag, including some who noted that its employees do much more perilous work every day.

“What a load of crap,” said Blake Ramsay. “Hydro workers deal with extremely dangerous workplace situations every day and a few flag poles at their own facilities should be no issue.

“I don’t believe for a minute that this decision is based on safety. Somebody somewhere is just trying to save a few nickels and dimes.”

“What a typical ‘mealy-mouthed’ response,” said Christine Gaston, noting that Hydro’s employees “deal with dangerous electrical problems all day. I am sure they are able to deal with flags and flag poles.”

“This is typical of bureaucracy trumping logic, the kind of bureaucracy that makes steam rise from the top of my head,” said John Watson, who pointed out that Hydro uses “cherry pickers” to lift workers up to power lines.

“It follows that maintaining our iconic national symbol would be learned at hydro maintenance kindergarten.”

Jack Burley wrote to say his 93-year-old uncle fought in World War II, and that abandoning the flag is an insult to him and many other Canadians who died while fighting for the right to fly it.

In the middle of the flurry of emails on Friday was one from Don Peat, a spokesperson for Mayor John Tory, saying, “you should be getting an update from Toronto Hydro shortly (if you haven’t already).”

Sure enough, an email arrived from Russell Baker, who deals with media for Hydro, saying, “We have listened to feedback from the community and, after consultation with the mayor’s office, have revisited the decision to fly flags at these six station locations.

“The poles had deteriorated, were posing a public safety concern, and a decision was made to allocate our limited resources to other electrical grid priorities.

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“We understand the public importance of demonstrating pride in the Canadian flag, which is why we fly them at our office locations, and are taking steps to expedite mounting flags at these locations while we review our flag-flying practices.”

Tory, who was in Europe at the time, obviously had to encourage Hydro to reconsider its edict from afar. But it shouldn’t require prodding from the mayor to get Hydro to make such a common-sense decision.