West End power cut hits stores and diners

Hundreds of restaurants, shops and businesses in the West End were disrupted by a major power cut.

Many in the area surrounding Covent Garden had to evacuate irate customers and close for the afternoon while others had to cope on emergency power and suffered serious inconvenience.

Restaurants were worst hit, with power going off as diners were coming to the end of their lunch just after 2pm yesterday.

Moji Mofthakhar, manager of Café Valerie, in Russell Street, just off the Piazza, said: "We were affected really badly. It just went dark and we couldn't continue to serve people. We had to ask them to leave.

"It's school half-term and we were expecting a lot of people so it was a big disappointment. We had to turn a lot away and I reckon we must have lost £400 to £500.

"I tried to ring the number given for the electricity company but it was just engaged. It really was very inconvenient and frustrating."

Next door, Tuttons was also affected by the power cut. Manager Daniel Honisett said: "Our power just went and we looked out of the window and saw people starting to come out of other businesses. We couldn't do anything in the afternoon because everything works through computers.

"I had to ring people and tell them that their pretheatre bookings would be cancelled though shortly after when the power came on I rang them again to tell them it was going to be OK."

At Pasta Brown, in Bow Street, burglar alarms sounded after the power failure.

Manager Harry Brown said: "We were right in the middle of the busiest time of the day. A couple of tables said they were not going to pay because of the noise from the alarms and others didn't want to pay the service charge." Many shops in the area had to evacuate customers.

At the Disney Store in the Piazza, one manager, Tom O'Brien, said: "The power went about 2.15 and them about 10 minutes later it came on again and then died. We just evacuated the shop."

Theatres in Covent Garden were also hit. The Royal Opera House was evacuated because of a small fire nearby but its performance of The Tempest went ahead with an emergency generator.

Staff at the Drury Lane Theatre worked frantically to ensure the production of Anything Goes went ahead. The London Transport Museum was also affected.