Power cuts hit town centre

From the archive, first published Tuesday 10th Apr 2007.

BASILDON was hit by a series of power cuts yesterday.

Around 200 town centre businesses, homes and shops - including BHS, WH Smith and Woolworths - were affected at lunchtime.

Earlier in the day, another cut hit Basildon's Cranes Farm industrial estate.

Helen Galley, an EDF spokesman, told how a fault on a high-voltage underground cable interrupted town centre power at around 12.45pm.

She said: "Power was restored to 147 customers within five minutes, with a further 13 customers back on supply at 1.15pm.

"Unfortunately at this point we briefly lost power to the same customers again. All supplies were restored at 2.30pm."

However, a manager at Woolworths pointed out that even the briefest of cuts can cause major problems.

She said: "It can take shops more than 30 minutes to get everything, including cash tills, on internal networks up and running again."

Streets affected by the power cut included Nether-mayne, The Gore, Eastley, Landermere, Market Pave-ment, Rantree Fold and Cherrydown.

This set of cuts followed an underground cable fault at 9.30am in Cranes Farm industrial estate, near the Nevendon roundabout, which affected supplies to 113 customers.

Roads affected included Paycocke Road, Christo-pher Martin Road, Fenners Way and Honywood Road.

The spokesman added: "These customers will have experienced several short interruptions with the power going on and off again as engineers worked to restore power by re-routing supplies.

"All customers were back on power at 12.23pm and engineers worked late into the day in order to locate both faults.

"EDF Energy Networks apologises to all customers who have experienced any inconvenience as a result of these interruptions."

- Meanwhile, shoppers were evacuated from Boots in Basildon town centre yesterday lunchtime after a fire broke out.

Firefighters took 15 minutes to deal with the small blaze inside an air conditioning unit.

Essex Fire and Rescue Service said there was no need to cut the electricity supply and other services.