Power restored to most Hydro-Quebec customers after forest fire outages

CTV National News: Battling wildfires in Quebec Genevieve Beauchemin reports on crews from the U.S. and Portugal joining the front lines to fight wildfires in Lebel-Sur-Quévillon, Que.

Power has been restored to most of the Hydro-Quebec customers who lost electricity Thursday due to northern forest fires.

Roughly 250,000 customers were in the dark at the outage's peak, down to about 42,000 by 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The majority of affected customers were in the Montreal area.

By 6:30 a.m. Friday, just 5,350 customers remained powerless, most in the Montreal, Laurentides and Lanaudière regions.

On social media, Hydro-Quebec said two of its transmission lines went offline because of the fire, noting that its equipment was not damaged due to "protective mechanisms" triggered by the heat and smoke.

There were roughly 80 fires burning across the province Thursday, prompting the evacuations of roughly 500 homes in the northern town Chapais.

Click here for an interactive map of current outages.

With files from CTV's Cindy Sherwin and The Canadian Press.