There were a number of power-cuts over the Christmas period in Shoeburyness (and some of Thorpe Bay, Southchurch, Wakering and Southend). This is my story on what happened the evening of the big one.

It seems there were brief power-cuts on a number of nights leading up to the major power-cut that lasted between 3 and 12 hours depending on your post code. As well as the big one, there were also power-cuts on Boxing day evening and another night. The night my Dad was aware of the power-cut was probably Wednesday which was boxing day, that power-cut only lasted up to a minute and then power returned. The other power-cut was apparently brief.

Shortly before 6.00pm on Friday 28th there was a short power-cut and the power came back on almost straight away. Then there was another power cut which lasted longer, but the power came back on. Then there was another power cut and the power cut completely. A little later we noticed that some of the lights were still working (very dimly) and that my laptop power cord was being powered as it was lit up. This continued a while and then this cut out completely. Also the Christmas tree lights were on very dimly. It was noticed some houses still had power. Soon after all the houses were out of power in our area, and no lights shined at all.

We went out and came back around 9.00pm and noticed that whilst most of Shoebury was out of power there were still some rows of houses and some shops and street lights that had power. Whilst some may have had power generators, I wonder how the other people had managed to get power.

Dad stayed up and the power in our area was restored at about 3.30 am on Saturday 29th. Everything came back on at this point.

Theories about what happened are:

1. Thieves trying to steal copper and lead had cut into a cable causing the power outage
2. A fire in the sub station had caused the outage
3. There were fires in the sub station on 3 different nights
4. The fire(s) was deliberately started by vandals
5. Installation of a new speed camera on Eastern Avenue caused the failure - presumably this one is a joke.
6. There was a fire at a substation near Shopland
7. The Ann Boleyne Burnt down and caused the power-cut

All items on the echo comments page indicated that the substation is looked after by EDF and fixed by EDF, we are supplied by Powergen and they indicated on their recorded message that it was their engineers that were fixing it, so whom owned the problem I do not know.

Here is the echo article and comments concerning the powercut

There seems to be a large number of people that are complaining their fridge and freezer food was all ruined. Now, our power was out for 9 hours and everything in the fridge and freezer remained cold, and it all kept fine. The fridge and freezer are designed to remain cold, and would only start defrosting if left open for a significant amount of time longer than 9 hours. I am skeptical over claims that food was ruined.

In terms of compensation - it doesn't seem that any is available unless the outage was over 18 hours, which is a shame. But overall I quite enjoyed the power outage. My family went out and caught a movie (where there was power) and did expect power back when we got in. Unfortunately we were still in the dark. What we did have was circle LED lights that we'd bought from the pound shop (and rewired as they didn't work properly) they gave off so much light the neighbours thought we had our lights on still! We sat round and had a drink and played a pub quiz game for a number of hours, and we ended up having a laugh.

Only problem was that we'd left everything turned on, and when the electricity came back on at 3:00am everything turned back on. Luckily my Dad slept downstairs and was able to switch everything off, including the tree lights. I can understand how a lot of fires happened that night...