TENS of thousands of homes and businesses were plunged into darkness yesterday as a massive power cut hit south and west Dorset.

Traffic lights and rail lines failed due to the outage, causing disruption on the roads and the railways, while shops and businesses were forced to close.

Firefighters responded to multiple fire alarms set off due to the outage, as well as incidents of people stuck in lifts.

The Sea Life Tower (Jurassic Skyline) in Weymouth also stopped, leaving people trapped in the observation pod at the top.

The outage was the result of a technical fault at National Grid's electricity sub-station at Chickerell and the company says it is investigating what happened.

A National Grid spokesman said 50,000 customers were affected in south and west Dorset, resulting in huge disruption to residents and workers.

As well as Weymouth, Portland, Chickerell and Dorchester communities in parts of west Dorset were also affected down to Bridport and Lyme Regis.

The power cut occurred between 12.25pm and 1.32pm.

Traffic lights failed in towns with Travel Dorset urging drivers to "use the Highway Code" for guidance, while trains were at a standstill between Wool and Weymouth.

When power returned, traffic lights in Abbotsbury Road at the Newstead Road junction, Weymouth, and on Trinity Street at the High West Street junction, Dorchester, failed to start up again. Engineers were called to reset them.

At Marks & Spencer in Weymouth, firefighters had to rescue two adults and two children stuck in a lift just above the ground floor.

Firefighters also rescued people stuck in a lift at properties in the town at Fernhill Avenue, Radipole Lane, Alexandra Road, Melcombe Avenue and Ricketts Close.

At Morrisons supermarket in Weymouth, staff had to act quickly to control the traffic queuing at the junction outside the car park as drivers were left unguided by traffic lights (below).

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Dorset Councils Partnership, which runs services for West Dorset District Council, North Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, had to close its South Walks House offices in Dorchester.

The power cut hit all three councils’ phone lines and internet, though it is hoped systems will be up and running today.

Dorset County Council was also affected, but managed to keep its phone lines working with a backup generator.

Dorset County Council’s director for the environment and economy Mike Harries said: “As soon as we were aware of the power outage we implemented our business continuity plans. The outage did mean traffic lights were not working but most road users acted sensibly, using the junctions with caution.

“The majority of our services ran as normal throughout, using back-up generators. The power was back-up and running just after 2pm and soon all our services, including most traffic lights, were running business as normal.”

Dorset County Hospital also had a contingency power supply to keep going.

A spokesman for the hospital said: “We have contingency plans in place to cope with power failures such as this and our backup generators are powering essential clinical areas.”

The National Grid confirmed that the cause of the outage was a transmission fault, rather than a distribution fault of SSE electricity board.

A National Grid spokesman said: "We are aware of a technical fault at Chickerell substation, resulting in the temporary loss of power in the Weymouth area.

"We can confirm power was restored at 1.32pm. An investigation has been launched to understand why this happened and we apologise for the inconvenience this has caused."

BUSINESS in Weymouth town centre ground to a halt as the power outage caused shops and cafes to close.

Caroline Kitchen, assistant manager at Barclays Bank, said: “We’ve had to shut everything up completely and on a Monday which is our busiest day. We have staff out of the front of the doors so we can still help people.”

Nadine King, manager of Buy and Sell Jewellers, said: “We’ve had to close for health and safety as it’s just too dark in the shop. We have another shop in Dorchester which has shut as well. It’s definitely going to affect our business for the day.”

Tim Layzell, supervisor at Marria's Cafe on King Street, said: "It happened at our busiest time of the day.

"We had a couple of people in for a sandwich but other than that we couldn't serve anyone. We couldn't serve hot food or coffees. It was a pain."

Some traders were worried their products would melt in the heat yesterday.

Owner of the Blue Café Pete Richmond said: “We’ve got the most stock in that we’ll probably have all year and now I’m worried about it all defrosting. We can’t cook anything at the moment which is chaos. The sun’s just come out and it’s just started to get busy and all I can do is a couple of cold baguettes.”

Fulvio Figliolini, owner of Rossi's Ice Cream Parlour on The Esplanade, said: "It stopped us from making ice cream which was my biggest concern.

"It could have been a lot worse as it could have been a lot longer. Luckily the freezers stayed cold enough that the ice cream didn't melt."

Other shops tried to cope without computers and digital tills.

Andy Holder of Fleetline Taxis said: “We’ve managed to use pen and paper and good old fashioned taxiing to get people around.”

Debbie Snook, manager of the Rock and Fudge shop on the Esplanade, said: “We’re not really coping. We’ve gone back to adding up in our heads and using calculators which is hard work. We aren’t able to sell any ice cream at the moment which is a big problem.”

Les Young, owner of King Edward's Fish and Chips in King Street, said: "We had to close whilst we were in the middle of long queues and orders.

"We did manage to continue serving for about half an hour after the power cut first happened but then had to stop. Luckily, the food managed to stay hot. The staff had to use their mental arithmetic when they took payments."

Andrew Knowles, president and of Weymouth and Portland Chamber of Commerce, said: “Obviously it would have had a negative impact on businesses and it’s a useful reminder to local firms to have plans in place for when the unexpected happens.”

He added: “It will be a minor blip, but in terms of today’s trading it will be a dip in the figures.”

Francis Drake, a local councillor and owner of Antonio’s Café in Weymouth, said: “A lot of business lost a lot of money in Weymouth today. Places had to close and they were turning away customers at the busiest time of the day.

“Trade hasn’t been good this year so it came at a time when the town could really do with an economic boost. I have to say though Weymouth had a nice spirit about it, everyone was really working together including the customers, everybody understood what was going on and no one complained.”

THERE was chaos at Weymouth train station during the power cut, with visitors left stranded whilst trains were brought to a halt (queue for taxis, below).

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People were put into taxis for Poole station, where power was still running. Shortly after the announcement, the power returned allowing trains to run again, but travellers still experienced some delays.

South Western Railway and Great Western Railway networks were affected by the power cut, and residual delays of around half an hour between Weymouth and Wool and Weymouth and Yeovil carried on until the late afternoon.

James and Diana Doble, from Basingstoke, had visited Weymouth for the weekend with their 3-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

James said: "We've been waiting for nearly two hours now.

"We were supposed to be visiting a friend in Bournemouth before heading back to Basingstoke, but we won't be able to now."

Another couple from Yeovil, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "We only came to visit Weymouth for the day.

"We went to go and get lunch but nowhere was serving, so we thought we would just wait for the next train. Apparently our train is stuck on the line somewhere.

"I feel bad for other people who have to go on somewhere else after this train.

"We thought we would come to the seaside because the weather is lovely. It's the worst day for it, it's hot and you couldn't get a drink whilst the power was out."

A RESIDENT described his experience of being stuck up the Sea Life Tower (Jurassic Skyline) during yesterday’s power cut.

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John Taylor from Wyke Regis was visiting the tower, pictured above, with his wife and aunt when the power cut struck, leaving them stranded 53m above Weymouth.

John said: “We were stuck up there. We had a lovely view but it got boring after an hour and a half. The air conditioning failed as well so it got very hot and sticky.

"It is the first time we have managed to get up here with my aunt who is quite elderly."

John also admitted his mind started to drift to the car park below and whether his parking ticket would expire.

He said: “We couldn’t stay up there forever. It makes you wonder whether the car in the car park would get a ticket, the clock was ticking. You just have to laugh at situations like this.”

A spokesman from Weymouth Sea Life said 30 passengers were stuck up the tower from 12.20pm and it wasn’t until 2pm that they were able to bring everyone down safely.

She added: “The staff at the tower are regularly drilled to deal with situations like this and to bring people back down safely. All the guests were in the safest hands.”