Britain’s Heathrow Airport was shut on Friday after a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out its power, disrupting flight schedules around the world.
Around 70 firefighters were tackling the blaze in the west of London, which led to a mass power outage at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest and the world’s fifth-busiest airport, and also knocked out its back-up power system.
Huge orange flames and plumes of black smoke could be seen shooting into the sky. Around 150 people were evacuated from nearby buildings and thousands of properties were without power.
The fire brigade said the cause of the fire was not known.
“Our firefighters are working tirelessly to bring the fire in #Hayes under control,” the service said in an update on X at 05:48 GMT. “Part of a transformer remains alight.
“As we head into the morning, disruption is expected to increase, and we urge people to avoid the area wherever possible.”
Heathrow said the airport, which was due to handle 1,351 flights during the day, flying up to 291,000 passengers, would stay closed until midnight as it was experiencing a significant power outage.
“Passengers are advised not to travel to the airport and should contact their airline for further information,” it said. “We apologise for the inconvenience.”
The fire, which was reported just after 11 p.m. (2300 GMT) on Thursday, forced planes to divert to airports across Britain and Europe, while many long-haul flights simply returned to their point of departure.
Energy Minister Ed Miliband said the “catastrophic” fire had prevented the power back up system from working and that engineers were working to deploy a third back-up mechanism. He said it was too soon to say what had caused the blaze.
“There was a back-up generator but that was also affected by the fire which gives a sense of how unusual and unprecedented it was,” he told Sky News.
“With any incident like this we will want to understand why it happened and what if any lessons it has for our infrastructure.”
