At least two homes were heavily damaged and wide swath of western Halton Region lost power after a transformer exploded in the town of Acton on Thursday morning.

Halton Regional Police say two structure “fires of significance” broke out in Georgetown sometime after 10 a.m., on Ballantine Drive and Lookout Court.

Halton Hills Fire Chief Harry Olivieri said calls began to come in after 9:45 a.m.

"We received 28 calls for service ranging from reports of fires, smells of smokes, odour investigations and power outages. We methodically started responding to these calls, starting with the most significant."

Aislin O’Hara said her home on Lookout Court in Georgetown lost power just after 10 a.m. A home four doors down caught fire.

“There was just very thick black smoke billowing out of the back of the home,” she said. “It eventually started coming out of the front doors.”

Fire crews arrived and rushed into the burning home.

“We saw the Halton fire crews rush into the street. There were about five or six crews and they immediately started running into the home that was on fire.”

O’Hara said there was nobody inside the burned home at the time.

She said several neighbours were attempting to contact the owner of the burned home to notify them of what occurred.

Olivieri said nobody was injured in either of the structure fires they responded to.

He says that homeowners that experienced an outage should call an electrician to inspect before resetting their breakers.

A resulting power surge at Toronto Premium Outlets forced officials to evacuate the mall after smoke was reported in some areas.

Shoppers were let back into the area sometime after 11 a.m.

There are no reports of injuries as a result of the explosion and the resulting fires.