Thousands of homes and businesses went dark across the southeast this morning after a power outage knocked out electricity in several communities.

Homeowners from Steinbach, Mitchell, Kleefeld, Grunthal, and Ste. Agathe all reported outages that began at around 9:30 AM.

Manitoba Hydro says about 5,000 customers lost power when a 115-kilovolt transmission line was taken offline. Spokesperson Bruce Owen says the downed line feeds four substations which, in turn, provide power to many residential areas.

Power began returning to the affected regions at around 10:00 AM.