Wolverhampton power cut hits hundreds of homes, city library and Mander Centre
Hundreds of homes and businesses were hit by a power cut across Wolverhampton today.
West Midlands Metro services and motorists faced distribution as traffic lights stopped working.
Traffic lights were out on the ring road including at the Waterloo Road junction and on the A41 Bilston Road to Priestfield.
Motorists were advised to take care while repairs were carried out.
West Midlands Metro services were halted into Wolverhampton city centre for an hour..
Trams were only stopping at Priestfield
West Midlands Metro tweeted: "As this is not part of our infrastructure and we want to return to normal service, we contacted the power company for an estimated time power will be restored."
Motorist Leigh Sanders was among those caught up in the chaos.
"We came to the traffic lights at the junction of Waterloo Road and the ring road and all the lights were blank," he said.
"When people realised we ended up with all four directions edging forward trying to work out whose turn it was.
"It was a little edgy, particularly when someone sped out of the lane turning right from the ring road onto Waterloo Road and stopped a few inches short of our car. I also had my young son in the back.
"We got to the Mander Centre with the rest of the lights being on.
"Here staff told us at the entrance to the car park they had no power so everyone was advised to drive up the car park with their lights on.
"The ticket machines were off, so we were told to use the ones inside the centre and press the button to get a ticket.
"When we got inside, the queues for the machine were long and half of these were out of action as they had switched off with people in the middle of paying before coming back on, so people were trying to call the centre staff using the intercom to get their money back.
"It was all a bit of a mess so the other half quickly decided just to cut our losses and go home."
Wolverhampton Library was also forced to temporarily close due to the outage.
It reopened within the hour but electricity remained off affecting the lift and internet services.
The Mander Centre said it remained open but lights were out along malls. The Wulfrun Centre was also affected.
Businesses were left without electricity which affected their trade.
Shoppers were also left frustrated, with ticket machines for the Wulfrun Shopping Centre car park going down.
Among the businesses affected was Pete's Farm House.
Margaret Beddow, aged 71, who runs the shop, said: "In this situation it is difficult because if we don't sell the food today, it is in the bin.
"We lose profit and it is the worse day of the week when it happens, Friday and Saturday is when we cover our rent.
"We don't know what is going on, I have had a word with the security guard and he said it is going to be off for an hour. But that is the only information we had.
"The power all of a sudden went. The power covers our fridges, the slicer, our till. We have a bakery in Bilston and we bring all our cooking over here to sell it."
Nutmeg, a restaurant in Farmers Fold, off Victoria Street, told customers on Facebook that its lights were off.
"As some of you may know Wolverhampton is currently experiencing a power cut which is due to be back to normal in around an hour," the firm said.
"Unfortunately due to this we are unable to open at the usual time of 10.30am today, we hope to be open as soon as we can."
St George's Vets, in St George's Parade, also told customers via Twitter that its phone lines were off.
Western Power Distribution said 629 premises were affected in the city although many had electricity supplies restored with a minute.
But they apologised for disruption to others as engineers worked to fix the fault.
Spokeswoman, Louise Birkett, said: "We have a fault on our high voltage network in Wolverhampton.
"It initially affected 629 customers of whom 114 were automatically restored in less than a minute.
"Engineers are working to restore it now. We are hoping to have it sorted within the hour.
"We don't know the cause yet but once we have everyone back on, we will look into it.
"We're not aware of any third party damage currently.
"We apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused."
