London’s Heathrow Airport Closes after Massive Fire at Electrical Substation
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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