TWO people were taken to York Hospital yesterday after an electricity cable was damaged - leading to thousands of homes being plunged into darkness.

In a statement, Yorkshire Ambulance Service said: "We were called to Hudson House, on Toft Green, at 15.13pm yesterday to the report of people being electrocuted.

"Two ambulances and one rapid response units attended the scene.

"Two workers were taken to York Hospital with burns."

The incident occurred after workers from the demolition contraction company, Squibb, hit an electricity cable at the Hudson House demolition site, sparking the outage.

In a statement Simon Valles, Squibb executive director for environment, health and safety & corporate social responsibility, said: "We can confirm that an incident took place at a site in York which resulted in a power cable strike.

"Two employees were taken to hospital. One required treatment for minor injuries. They were both  discharged from hospital following treatment.

"The demolition works are almost finished at this site and we do not expect the completion of those works to be delayed.

"Our Health and Safety department has commenced an investigation into the incident so we are unable to provide any further information at this time."

A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive said: "HSE is aware of the incidient and is carrying out initial enquiries." 

Around 5,000 houses lost power and York Station was left in darkness - with rail travellers having to be evacuated.

Many people were seen walking around the city using their mobile phones as torches to find their way.

A spokesman for Northern Powergrid said that power was restored to all homes in the city by the early hours of this morning.

The spokesman added: "Our teams worked throughout the night to restore power to the final 960 customers in the YO16 area, with the final customers back on just after 3am this morning.

"We’d like to thank our customers for their patience whilst our teams worked to safely get the lights back on for those affected by the inadvertent damage by another company to our underground power network.”

In a statement, York Council confirmed that all offices returned to normal this morning, with the West Offices being open to visitors.