36-hour blackout in power cut

Hundreds of council workers, firefighters and police were left without electricity during what's been described as one of the worst power cuts to hit the town centre and the SECOND within a week.

The Town Hall was particularly badly affected and emergency generators had to be brought in to ensure staff didn't spend a second day without power.

At the fire station emergency lighting came into operation but the only way staff could maintain radio watch was by sitting in one of the fire appliances and monitoring its radio, powered by the vehicle's batteries.

Firefighters also had to hand-crank the normally power-operated doors each time they needed to open or close them in an emergency.

The power-cut brought the return of operational difficulties to Bexhill police station only a week after the previous emergency.

Rother's chief executive Derek Stevens said: "We were without power from first thing Thursday morning until shortly before 5pm on Thursday when two large generators were coupled up. By Friday night the normal electricity supply was back on.

"Members of the public were very understanding, probably because we weren't the only ones affected," he said.

At its height, around 5,000 customers lost power at around 7.30am last Thursday. Most were reconnected within half an hour but in the worst affected area around Town Hall Square and Beeching Road South another 350 customers struggled until Friday evening.

Mr Fernando of Town Hall Square's Murco garage was without power from 7.30am until 5pm.

"We could not serve any petrol because the pumps were not working so we had almost no sales all day. The Thursday before we were without power for three hours.

"We would normally have lots of customers. We were open from 6am so could serve petrol for only an hour and a half."

Alan Haldane, of Haldane's News in Town Hall Square, said: "We just had to do everything manually. We wrote everything down and put it through the till later."

Mr Stevens added: "What this has done is give us the opportunity to consider what things we should be doing in the event of a major power cut."

Seeboard blamed the disruption on a fault on high voltage underground supplies and said staff worked overnight to correct the problem.