THOUSANDS of homes were plunged into darkness last night following a major power cut in a seaside town.More than 10,000 homes and businesses in Felixstowe and surrounding villages were affected by the black out, which occurred shortly after 5pm and was caused by problems at two substations in the town.

By Danielle Nuttall

THOUSANDS of homes were plunged into darkness last night following a major power cut in a seaside town.

More than 10,000 homes and businesses in Felixstowe and surrounding villages were affected by the black out, which occurred shortly after 5pm and was caused by problems at two substations in the town.

EDF Energy said more than 2,000 of its customers were reconnected within 30 minutes and added engineers battled against the clock and bad weather conditions to restore the rest within three hours.

A spokesman for the company said last night: “EDF Energy has managed to restore power to all bar one of the customers in Felixstowe who were affected by failures earlier this evening.

“Initially several thousand customers suffered power failures following problems at two substations in the town but more than 2,000 were back within half an hour.

“Engineers from the company, working in poor weather conditions, managed to gradually restore supplies during the following three hours.

“The engineers are still working to ensure supply is restored as quickly as possible to the last customer.

EDF Energy apologises for any inconvenience caused by the problems, especially at this seasonal time of year.”

The power cut caused minor delays to trains travelling into Felixstowe as train drivers slowed down at signal points as a precaution.

A spokeswoman for rail operator One said: “There was a power loss and trains were going through signals on a caution, which means it slows it all down. This is why there is a delay.

“It was an external thing. It is all back to normal now.”

One homeowner, who lives in Felixstowe, said the lights had flickered at about 5pm before all the house went dark.

“The streets and the houses outside were all in darkness. We phoned EDF energy and it was an automated response saying they knew there was a power failure in our area and were doing everything they could to rectify it,” he said.

“It finally went on at 7pm. While driving around, the majority of Felixstowe seemed to be off for at least a couple of hours.

“The seafront was really eerie as normally there's flashing lights in the arcade but there was nothing. It was all dark.”

Staff at the Wimpy restaurant in Hamilton Road were forced to light candles during the power cut.

Some homeowners in Reydon, near Southwold, thought they too had been caught up in the black out affecting Felixstowe.

But problems there began yesterday morning and engineers were already on site dealing with the affected overhead lines. They were expecting to restore supplies to the final customers by 11pm last night.