FOUR patients in intensive care had to be transferred after a power failure at a North-East hospital.

To make matters worse, the first-line generator at Middlesbrough General Hospital also failed. But a second-line auxiliary generator kicked in and restored power to the Teesside unit.

The patients were moved the short distance from Middlesbrough General Hospital to James Cook University Hospital on Monday night, "as a precaution".

Power to Middlesbrough General Hospital's trauma block, which houses the intensive care unit and accident and emergency department, was cut at about 9pm, triggering alarms throughout the hospital.

To guarantee patient safety, health trust bosses decided to transfer intensive-care patients and close the accident and emergency department while engineers tackled the fault. No other in-patients in the trauma block, which includes the South Tees spinal cord injuries high dependency unit, needed to be moved.

Patients requiring accident and emergency treatment were diverted to North Tees Hospital's casualty unit, in Stockton, during the night.

Power was not fully restored until yesterday afternoon and surgeons operated late into the afternoon to avoid cancelling a small number of delayed operations.

Carol Dargue, divisional manager for trauma at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We practise for events like this, so we were well prepared. However, we are very sorry for the noise which disturbed nearby residents during the night. This was due to our back- up generators and safety alarms.

"Patient safety is paramount when things like this happen so it was important to get power back on and test our systems.

"I'm expecting everything to be back to normal today and would like to thank local people for their tolerance and understanding while we were dealing with this emergency."