London’s Heathrow Airport Closes after Massive Fire at Electrical Substation
Travel chaos caused by Heathrow closure will last into next week and cost hundreds of millions in losses. Meanwhile, British Counter Terrorism Command is now leading the investigation into fire’s origins.
A major fire at an electrical substation near Heathrow Airport in west London caused a significant power outage, leading to widespread disruptions at Europe’s busiest airport and affecting thousands of homes and businesses.
The fire broke out late Thursday night at the North Hyde electrical substation, located about two miles from Heathrow. The blaze involved a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil, which ignited, causing explosions and thick smoke. Emergency services were alerted close to midnight local time.
Authorities said they found no evidence that it was suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation.
The fire knocked out power to Heathrow and thousands of homes in the area. It affected at least 1,350 flights to and from the airport, according to flight tracking service FlightRadar 24, and the impact was expected to last several days, as passengers try to reschedule their trips and airlines work to reposition their planes and crews.
After power was restored, a British Airways jet touched down just before sunset on Friday after Heathrow lifted its closure order. Further arrivals followed, including a short flight from Manchester in northwest England.
It must be noted that the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police was asked to investigate the origins of this fire. While authorities have stated that there is currently no evidence of malicious intent, they are wisely keeping an open mind as the investigation proceeds.
Huge orange flames and plumes of black smoke shot into the sky west of London at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday as a blaze engulfed a power substation about a mile and a half from the airport, forcing the sudden closure of Europe’s busiest hub and disrupting global flights.
“While there is currently no indication of foul play we retain an open mind at this time,” London’s Metropolitan police service (Met) said in a statement.
“Given the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure, the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command is now leading inquiries.”
Heathrow is the fourth busiest in the world, so this closure has global travel ramifications. Despite the fact the airport is now open, the chaos in air travel caused by a fire will likely last through next week.
Heathrow’s closure is expected to affect more than 1,300 flights in the coming days, and airline analytics firm Cirium estimated that “upwards of 145,000” passengers could be affected.
Shukor Yusof, founder of Singapore-based Endau Analytics, an advisory firm that focuses on the aviation industry, told CNN the financial losses from the shutdown could be in the “hundreds of millions of pounds.”
The fallout “will cause chaos, undoubtedly, for the weekend and into next week because they have to resolve all those flights that couldn’t come in, all those problems that have piled up because of this shutdown,” he said.
…Cirium said: “The impact of this incident can cascade over several days as aircraft, crew, passengers are out of place, with limited spare aircraft and seats available to recover passengers.”
If this turns out that the fire was caused by an electrical problem at the substation, it would be a disturbing sign that the United Kingdom’s focus on social welfare and woke policies has led to the lack of proper maintenance of its infrastructure. Much of the grid network dates back to the post-war era, with some elements even older.
Connectivity challenges have left roughly 400 gigawatts worth of power projects currently queuing to be connected to the UK’s power grids and a vast number face a wait of up to 10 to 15 years. Though among these are speculative applications and so called “zombie sites”, there are a number of viable projects and developments being held in limbo as a result of estimated connection dates adding huge burdens to construction timelines.
While reforms are underway to promote investment in the UK’s electricity infrastructure and the way connection applications are handled, there seems to be little prospect of a significant shift in the availability of power in the short term.
The British obsession with ‘Net Zero’ and the push for renewable energy sources in a country that is overcast much of the time is a contributing factor to the challenge.
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This can happen here, too. Our infrastructure is old and vulnerable to attack, including by EMP. If you have a generator, run it with a load (I use my coffee maker with vinegar for cleaning) at least quarterly (I test mine every other month) to make sure it will work when you need it to. And don’t forget maintenance!
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My parents’ previous house in Connecticut was on the good old Neversource network, so they had a generator, and they tested it weekly. Thanks to Neversource, it got a workout probably at least once a month year-round. They had gotten tired of having to hike water up from their dock to flush the toilet since they had a well, so no power, no water. Our section of Connecticut didn’t get power back for over a week after both Irene and Sandy. A VP of CL&P had actually said on TV the Wednesday after Irene when asked about power issues in Southeastern CT that “We’ll get to them eventually”. He wasn’t a VP by the end of the day.
But isn’t England part of Europe where everything is wonderful and socialist. Why is their substation burning up?
England may be a part of Europe, but the greater London area isn’t.
Thank God we haven’t had a tanker truck take out I95 or a big boat hit a big bridge. My guess is that these probes will stop happening here while The Donald is at the helm.
This happened in Jacksonville Florida a few months after 911, leaving 300,000 people without power for a week.
It’s possible for it to be sabotage, but sometimes big transformers just self-destruct.
I’ve seen it commented elsewhere that it seems rather … unforgivable … that a piece of critical infrastructure doesn’t have its own backup power generation.
Which leads me to ask, in the US do large airports such as JFK, OHare, etc, have backup power facilities? I assume that governmental facilities such as the Pentagon, the White House, and Congressional buildings have their own grid with enough juice to at least keep critical systems functioning. It sounds like the Brits don’t.
I worked at a hospital in Birmingham years ago where we tested the emergency generators monthly to ensure they would start and run. Annually we would simulate a power failure to switch the emergency power bus to the generator plant to make sure they would transfer and carry the load. I did that every Saturday after Thanksgiving. One year the load pickup didn’t happen so we called the service company the same day and arranged for service first thing Monday morning.
And that, boys and girls, is why you test your generator regularly – so you don’t have to wish you had.
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I was working in the library at the hospital in SE CT during the Northeast power outage of 2003. It was a nice sunny day, so I wasn’t using any ceiling or desk lights. My office had previously been a patient care area, so it turned out some of my outlets were still on the backup generators, and that was what my desktop computer was plugged into. So when the power outage hit, I didn’t notice until I was shutting stuff down as I was getting ready to leave work 15 minutes later, our switchover was so seamless. (I was probably wondering why the main library lights were off.) Of course, then I got to go home and sit in the hot dark with two small children until bedtime.
Well-funded actors waging strategic anti-Western Civ war or woke incompetence. Wonderful.
Seems a lot of this happening lately. Señor Climate Change again?
The real reason the airport closed is because it replaced its old generator with a “GREEN GENERATOR” and the new one failed the first time the power failed.
The Heathrow biomass system, first introduced in 2012, was touted as late as 2023 as saving CO2 and promoting a green environment. Since the fire, there has been absolute dead silence about it, leading me to wonder if it worked at all. Physical evidence seems to suggest that.
Critical Facilities Manager (Master Electrician) here… we run no load weekly. 2m under load quarterly. (6m plant). Distribution stations don’t typically fail catastrophically, unless no IR scans are done or it’s lightning, wind. State of England does not support adequate maintenance and repairs, but this looks to be sabotage. Usual suspects….
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