Between 7,000 and 10,000 people experienced power outages caused by severe thunderstorms in Manitoba Saturday morning.

Manitoba Hydro Public Affairs Officer Bruce Owens says outages started being reported as early as 2:30 a.m. He notes Ste. Anne was one of the communities with widespread outages.

“We are trying to dispatch our crews as fast as possible. Extra staff have been brought in to deal with the number of calls that we are getting.”

Owens says most Manitoba Hydro customers had restored power by 1:30 p.m. Saturday. He says there may be some individual residences that are without power due to trees down or branches on hydro lines. He encourages those individuals to report their outage location online through the outage link so they can dispatch their crews effectively.

Owens notes Manitoba Hydro also has crews out on patrol looking for downed or affected lines.