A fire at a substation led to a blackout across an area of Brighton. The Preston Circus area of the city was in darkness from around 6.30pm yesterday until 8.40am today.

Initially 669 homes were plunged into darkness, although power has now been restored. It is understood the Duke of York’s cinema was also affected.

Traffic lights were also off.

One firefighter, speaking this morning, said people were "taking their lives in their hands" trying to navigate traffic lights which have gone out.

"It was really strange overnight," he said.

"All the street lights were out and it looked odd."

Another driver said: "It was really frightening."

The blackout was caused by a fire at a substation in Preston Circus.

Sussex Police said they first received a call at 6.40pm last night, reporting that UK Power Networks had said the lights were out.

This morning at 7.10am UK Power Networks confirmed to the police they had been working through the night.

Sussex Police said they had received a "series of calls" about the lights.

The delay between power being restored and traffic lights coming back on was because UK Power Networks and Brighton and Hove City Council need to "sync" them.

A UK Power Network statement said: "UK Power Networks engineers worked through the night and into the early hours of today in order to restore power supplies to customers in the Preston Circus area affected by a fault that occurred on the electricity distribution network yesterday evening.

"Some customers experienced brief interruptions while the engineers reconfigured the network but supplies to the final group of customers were restored at 6.20am.

"Again we apologise for the inconvenience caused by this incident."

If it is safe send your power chaos pictures and stories to anna.roberts@theargus.co.uk