A MAJOR power cut affected more than 500 properties including most of a retail park.

Supermarket staff dashed to protect frozen food from dangerously thawing while restaurants had to send diners home.

Some stores even closed early after the power cut in the Turner Rise area of Colchester showed no sign of abating.

Power went out around 4.10pm and returned nearly two hours later.

Some shops closed and saw little point in re-opening.

The power failure also affected traffic lights at the busy junction of Turner Road and the Northern Approach Road.

Iceland on Turner Rise Retail Park faced losing frozen food stocks had power not been restored by midnight.

Senior supervisor Robert Davis said: “I was down one of the aisles and there was a flicker and then it went into darkness.

“We looked outside and could tell the whole retail park was down and people had to evacuate the stores.

“Everyone has to evacuate for health and safety because there would be no fire alarms working.

“We only had about six customers in at the time but Home Bargains and Dunelm had quite a few in.”

Iceland has no back-up generator so staff had to put protective covers over the frozen food as a short term measure to keep it safe.

The store closed as usual at 6pm having lost thousands of pounds in trade.

Mr Davis said: “I came in at 7am hoping everything was alright and looked in all the freezers and checked everything was alright.

“It was strange – nearly the whole retail park went under.”

Gary Stemmer, Pizza Hut manager at the park, said: “It was a bit of a shock.

“We lost about £200 to £300 trade and £500 to £600 stock which was in the fridges.”

Three tables of diners had drinks but hadn’t started eating when the power went out, so left without being charged.

Another two tables of customers were towards the end of their meals and were given discounts.

However, Pizza Hut wasn’t able to open again until 7.30pm so lost more customers.

At Jollyes Pet Store a staff member said it was forced to close early as tills weren’t functioning.

And while Asda’s power went out briefly, its generators were activated to enable the store to remain open, said a spokesman.

A UK Power Networks spokeswoman said all power was restored by 5.50pm and a fault on a piece of electrical equipment was to blame.