Customers at Colchester's Leisure World were plunged into darkness after a power cut wiped out electricity to hundreds of homes.

At least 1,500 customers of Eastern Electricity were affected by the teatime blackout including firemen at Colchester fire station, Go Bananas, Charter Hall and McDonald's restaurant in Cowdray Avenue.

Power went off at 5.40pm when most people were on their way home and although two sets of traffic lights in the busy road were out, there were no reports of any traffic problems.

Chris Lenartowicz, manager of Go Bananas, said he had about 25 people on the premises at the time.

"The emergency lights came on but we refunded customers their money and sent them home," he said.

About 350 people were at Colchester Leisure World enjoying a variety of activities including swimming, squash and five-a-side football with athletics going on at Charter Hall when the lights went out.

Manager John Argent said: "The power cut caused a reasonable amount of inconvenience to our customers.

"We have a fairly practised routine for incidents of this nature and staff made sure everyone was marshalled to fire exits in case we needed to evacuate. The emergency lights were on."

He said a call to Eastern Electricity confirmed it was a power cut and it was decided not to evacuate.

"It was heading towards our peak period and we were busy," he said.

Sub officer George Bruce, of Colchester Fire Station, in Cowdray Avenue, said the station had a generator and also a stock of batteries which powered the emergency lights.

The telephone still worked and although the alert lights didn't, there were no problems when firemen had to leave the station during the power cut when called to attend a road traffic accident at Maldon Road, Birch.

McDonald's had to close because its cooking equipment is electrically powered.

Franchisee Cas Moorhen said the restaurant closed for two hours at the busiest time of day. He said they lost 25 per cent of the day's trading - about 350 customers.

All power supplies were restored by 7.17pm. A spokeswoman for Eastern Electricity said the power cut was caused by a fault in an underground cable.

Customers were switched to an alternative source and the fault was due to be located and repaired as a high priority today.

She said commercial properties in the Cowdray Centre were affected, as well as residents in Mason Road, Goring Road, Valentines Drive, part of Ipswich Road, Suffolk Close, St Andrew's Avenue and Havering Close.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.