A sand festival was hit by raging winds which ripped down its seaside defensive wall.

But the sand sculptures at the exhibition in Black Rock, Brighton, remained standing.

The storm hit the site yesterday as visitors were walking round the huge sculptures.

A stretch of five-metre high fences and the scaffolding which held them up collapsed in a strong blast of wind which one observer said resembled a mini-twister.

No one was injured and somehow the sculptures survived unscathed.

A spokeswoman for the festival said it would stay open while the fences were fixed.

She said: "The sculptures seem to be as strong as we said they were. A couple of them have been damaged by rain over the past couple of weeks but they were not touched by the storm."

The giant Egyptian-style formations which measure up to ten metres high took 60 professional carvers two weeks to create from 10,000 tonnes of sand.

The exhibition, which opened in July, has already received more than 100,000 visitors, despite the inclement weather. It is open seven days a week until September 11, from 11am to 8pm.

Meanwhile, the storms caused a power failure when lightening struck in Crawley.

Numerous automatic fire alarms were set off and several lifts broke down.

Appliances from Crawley, East Grinstead and Haywards Heath attended calls from shops and businesses in the area after lightning is believed to have struck, causing the breakdown.

A brigade spokeswoman said the incidents all turned out to be minor and there were no casualties.

At about 1.50pm all power went after a lightning bolt hit an electricity sub station.

Lights and telephone lines lost power for at least 40 minutes.

Businesses ground to a halt, shops could not use tills and electric pumps in pubs stopped working.

The fire brigade spokeswoman said: "The power cut set off lots of alarms and stopped a few lifts so there were some people trapped for up to an hour.

"Firefighters winched them open with tools to free them and no one was injured."

A spokesman for EDF Energy said: "A sudden, violent storm in the Crawley area briefly interrupted power to several thousand customers at 1.50pm.

"Lightning struck some of our equipment in the Three Bridges area, cutting off power to customers in Handcross, Ardingly, Forest Row, Southgate, West Hoathly and part of Gatwick.

"EDF Energy staff worked to restore power as swiftly as possible by re-routing supplies. The majority of customers were back on power within half an hour.

"All our customers affected by the storm had their power restored by 2.50pm."