Fewer than 100 customers still without power after storm

Fewer than 100 Manitoba Hydro customers in the province, including about a dozen in Winnipeg, were still without power on Friday morning due to storms that wreaked havoc across Manitoba earlier this week.

The Crown corporation said crews had completed repairs on the last of the large outages across the capital and southern Manitoba. About 80 homes in the Balmoral area were also still affected.

Storm damage is still causing issues, Hydro media relations officer Peter Chura told the Free Press.

At around 4:30 a.m. Friday morning, tree branches brought down power lines in Windsor Park, causing outages for some 330 customers. Crews are working to safely restore power there as quickly as possible, but it could be several hours, Chura said.

“Some of the damaged power lines are in difficult-to-access areas where we can’t use heavy equipment.” he said. “These customers had already been without power for a couple of days due to the storm earlier this week and were just restored last night, so getting the power back on today is a priority.”

The aftermath of the storm has continue to cause issues, including a damaged hydro pole in East St. Paul that broke, causing an outage that affected more than 1,000 customers. Crews were able to repair the pole and restore power before the end of the night.

Hydro said that damaged equipment not yet detected or weakened trees and branches falling on power lines could still result in power disruptions in the days ahead.

Hydro, in a release, said damage this extensive and outages so numerous and widespread is rare for a summer storm in the province.