Manitoba Hydro says 28,000 homes remain in the dark after a severe storm swept through southern Manitoba on Wednesday night, causing widespread power outages.
Most of the affected customers are in Winnipeg, the public utility says, but there are several outages outside the capital as well.
Manitoba Hydro says high winds, heavy rain and lightning brought down trees, poles and power lines, resulting in more than 500 separate outages.
Crews were “assessing damage and making areas safe” on Thursday.
“We are prioritizing the largest outages first to restore power to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience,” it wrote on social media.
“We can’t provide estimated restoration times yet as crews are still assessing a large number of outages scattered across a wide area,” the utility added in a news release.
Additional crews have been assigned to outage restoration work, including construction crews and contractors diverted from ongoing projects.
Environment Canada says Winnipeg’s Richardson International Airport saw gusts up to 91 kilometres per hour. It says Brandon was hit by peak winds of 133 kilometres per hour.
The storm also brought heavy rain, but its fast movement meant there was little accumulation.
–With files from The Canadian Press
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