Heathrow Airport in London, one of the greatest in the world, has been shut down following a devastating fire at the electrical substation supplying its power, triggering power outages. This caused chaos in the travel industry and affected hundreds of thousands of passengers.
According to authorities, the airport will remain closed at least for one day.
The London bound flights have been diverted to Amsterdam, Paris and Ireland.
”Due to a fire at an electrical substation supplying the airport, Heathrow is experiencing a significant power outage. To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, Heathrow will be closed until 23h59 on 21 March. Passengers are advised not to travel to the airport and should contact their airline for further information. We apologise for the inconvenience,” Heathrow Airport posted on their official X account.
Flight disruptions are expected to last for a couple of days.
The airport itself hasn’t been affected by the blaze. The National Grid facility, where the blaze started after a transformer containing 25,000 litres of cooling fluid caught on fire, is around two kilometers (1.2 miles) away from the airport.
According to Mirror, the London Fire Brigade received 212 calls from people reporting the fire. They engaged 70 firefighters to contain the blaze.
”This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible,” assistant commissioner Pat Goulbourne said.
Heathrow Airport officials states that the airport has a backup power system in place but its activation takes time. As per the BBC, the back up systems “all operated as expected” when the power outage happened but they are not enough to run the whole airport.
In January only, Heathrow Airport broke the record by welcoming over 6.3 million passengers, which is 5% more compared to the same period last year.
Besides the flight disruptions, rail services to and from Heathrow have also been canceled for Friday, the National Rail reports.
At the time being, authorities are investigating how the fire started, with the counter terrorism police looking into possible sabotage.
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