About 2,578 customers were in the dark Thursday in the Altona, Emerson and Gretna area.

Manitoba Hydro reports a pole fire is to blame for the widespread outage.

Bruce Owen with Manitoba Hydro says crews isolated the damaged pole which will need to be replaced.

Owen notes some customers may gain power before others, and apologizes for the inconvenience.

Meantime, the Carman-Dufferin Fire Department also responded to a hydro pole fire on Thursday. The outage affected about 7 customers. As of 8:30 pm emergency crews had cleared the scene but workers with Manitoba Hydro remained to repair the damage.

Photo courtesy of Terry Klippenstein

Photo courtesy of Laverne Siemens