A number of Cardiff businesses have lost vital trade after a fire left them without power and forced them to send customers home on a busy night in the city. A number of events are taking place on Friday night in the capital including Blondie playing at Cardiff Castle, Wales taking on Armenia at the Cardiff City Stadium, Peter Kay performing at the Cardiff International Arena and the Inspiral Carpets playing the Tramshed.
The events, combined with good weather and the usual Friday afternoon delays, saw traffic come to a standstill in some areas earlier, with delays of nearly an hour on parts of the M4. You can get live updates on traffic with our live blog here.
With many pubs and restaurants in Canton packed out with Wales fans ahead of tonight's European Championships qualifier, emergency services were also called to a fire at the Gray Street park and ride car park, just off Cowbridge Road East, where an electrical box had caught fire. You can get more story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Read more: Live updates as emergency services tackle fire in Cardiff near pubs packed with Wales football fans
The incident left 90 properties without power - though they were expecting to see it restored tonight at 11pm - and forced a number of businesses full with customers to close early on a very busy night.
Salvatore, who owns Italian restaurant Calabrisella, said they'd had 150 bookings tonight and would lose out "hugely" as they had no power.
"We had 150 bookings today," he said. "It's really bad news. It was a matchday and a big day for us. We had some people inside and our machines stopped working, so we already lose money.
"We try to put all our stock, because of our fridges, to our ice cream shop [further down Cowbridge Road East]. It's unbelievable. I spoke to one fireman who says they are hoping to fix the problem tonight if Western Power can come with a generator, but someone else told me it depends on how the lines are underneath.
"We wish for it to come back because tomorrow we have more bookings. And Sunday is Father's Day too."
Staff at Hudo Lounge, in Cowbridge Road East, also had to close early for the night after they completely lost power. "A lot of us this side [of Cowbridge Road East] have nothing [no power]," one staff member said. "I think the other side are okay. It was an electrical box, thankfully fire came very quickly because near the box were cars, and with fuel and everything you don't know!"
"We can't do anything, you can't use the machines, you can't take payment, the kitchen. We let people stay to finish but couldn't let anyone else in and we are closed. We don't know when it will be back, maybe it's going to be a few days."
Corporation Yard in Cowbridge Road East was also affected by the power cut. Whilst the venue was able to remain open, tills went down and so customers were unable to pay or order their meals and drinks for around 45 minutes, a staff member told WalesOnline. Fortunately, the tills returned to working order and staff were said tonight to be "working hard" to catch up on taking orders and payments and serving customers who had to wait longer than usual for their orders.
A number of other businesses, such as Sen BBQ and Caprinos Pizza, were also impacted by the fire and had to close, while others like Canton European Shop were able to stay open despite having no power, but were only able to take cash payments.
The latest update on the National Grid's power cut website said there were 90 properties without power in the CF11 and CF5 areas. The company estimated they would have restored customers' power by 11pm tonight.
The power cut here has been labelled as a 'High Voltage (HV)incident' which National Grid said 'tend to be larger, affecting the wider area and could mean your neighbours are off-supply too.'
READ NEXT:
- Incredible scenes as hundreds of balloons released
- The poignant scenes as Ely remembered Kyrees and Harvey
- Boys wear skirts to school in protest at no shorts policies in heatwave
- Teenager murdered his own brother in front of their mum
- The impressive work being done to transform an ordinary road into Cardiff's new Canal Quarter
Find out about traffic and travel issues where you live:
