More than 20,000 homes and business in Basildon and Pitsea were plunged into darkness by a massive power cut - disrupting the journeys of hundreds of commuters.

The power cut today (Friday) forced the closure of both Basildon and Pitsea stations on the c2c line into Fenchurch Street.

The power to more than 3,500 homes failed just before breakfast time, and engineers from the electricity supply company 24-Seven were working frantically to restore supplies.

A spokesman for the company said: "This is quite abnormal. We estimate that about 20,000 properties have been affected. Normally engineers only have to deal with two or three faults, but in this case there were 14 high voltage feeders which had tripped out.

"We cannot be certain when the power will be restored but we are working flat-out to solve the problem as quickly as possible."

Initially, the company had estimated that fewer than 4,000 properties had been affected, but the figure was revised when information began flowing in from all parts of the district.

Engineers had hoped to have the power back on in time for businesses and shops to open at 9am, but a spokesman for the company admitted that was unlikely and they did not know exactly what caused the widespread failure.

24-Seven maintains the electricity network for Eastern Energy, and the spokesman said at first that a total of 3,747 homes were without power as of 7am this morning.

Basildon police and fire stations were also cut off, as was much of the town centre. Traffic lights were also out of action and police were monitoring traffic flows and ready to step in in case of problems.

A spokesman for Basildon police said: "We were plunged into darkness along with everybody else, but fortunately we have an emergency generator which allowed us to keep the power going so things were not disrupted too much.

"However, we took dozens of calls from people wanting to know what was going on."

The fault - which was described as a network failure - was reported at approximately 6.30am, and engineers were immediately sent to try to repair it.

A Railtrack spokesman confirmed trains were not stopping at the stations following the power cut, which happened at about 6.30am. He added it was impossible to say when they would be open again, adding there would also be minor delays to services.

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