Telford Debenhams store shoppers evacuated
Telford's Debenhams department store was closed for almost four hours after an electrical fault cut off the lights and caused the shop to be evacuated.
Two fire crews were called to the store in Telford town centre just after 11am yesterday after fuses tripped following an electrical short circuit in the staff cloakroom.
Fire officers said a bang was heard in store as the computer systems were knocked out and the shop was closed until about 3pm as experts investigated possible water damage in the electrical system.
A spokesman for Debenhams said: "Debenhams Telford was evacuated on Sunday at approximately 11.45am due to an electrical fault which affected our till system.
"We worked closely with the fire brigade to rectify the situation and the store was reopened shortly after 3pm. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers."
Gareth Walker, crew manager at Telford Central fire station, attended and said there would have been hundreds of shoppers in the store at the time.
He said: "The alarms went off due to an electrical fault which we think was caused by some water in the electrics.
"Some of the fuses tripped as a result and knocked out a couple of systems and the fire alarms were automatically set off.
"There were plenty of customers there when it happened and the lights went out and there was quite a large bang as the fuse tripped."
The Debenhams spokesman said the store staff did not think water caused the problem and they were not aware of a bang.
Fire officers did a search of the site with shopping centre security staff and found no fire damage but ordered that the store remain closed until an electrical engineer had attended.
"We had to close the store for safety reasons ," Mr Walker added.
