A 22-year-old man was critically injured by a downed power line in Kailua Sunday morning when he tried to approach a high voltage line with a fire extinguisher because the line was arching over cars and possibly causing the cars to smoke, officials said.

An Emergency Medical Services spokeswoman said the man put his hand on his car and was shocked by the voltage. He stopped breathing but emergency responders were able to revive him, she said.

Paramedics took the man to an area hospital in critical condition.

The downed line caused about 1,700 Hawaiian Electric Co. customers near Kuulei and Kailua roads to lose power for about an hour.

HECO is trying to determine the cause of the outage, which began around 9 a.m. Sunday. The incident was initally reported as a downed power line on a car on Ohana Street.

Crews worked to restore most of the 1,700 customers by 10 a.m. but about 25 houses nearest to the incident remained without power for a while longer.

Crews finished the work at about 11 a.m.