Firefighters from Hayes in West London competed for a site within two miles of Heathrow Airport following an appeal from the local Northhide Power Substation to investigate smoke swirling smoke from the area’s Northhide Power Substation around 11:20pm on Thursday.
Within hours, one of the busiest airports in the world was closed to all air traffic, and incoming planes were closed as long as New Delhi and Los Angeles had retreated and compensation had begun.
Willie Walsh, director of the International Air Transport Association, said Willie Walsh, former CEO of British Airways, a longtime critic of the airport, said, “How can we rely entirely on a single power source for critical infrastructure, both domestically and globally? “If that’s the case – there’s a clear plan failure by the airport.”
The question is how a fire at a single substation can repeatedly shut down one of the world’s largest airports around Whitehall.
The flame fueled with 25,000 liters of cooling oil in the transformer at the substation appears to have been sufficient to damage the backup transformer © Matthew Muirhead
The cause of the ignition is unknown, but the fierceness of the flame fueled by 25,000 liters of cooling oil within the transformer at the substation appears to have been sufficient to damage the backup transformer at the site.
It was enough to knock out the entire substation that supplies electricity to terminals 2 and 4 at Heathrow, and was lighting on the runway, causing such confusion at the airport and decided to close it completely.
Heathrow’s diesel fuel backup generator worked as planned. However, these are in place to allow you to perform basics such as landing aircraft and passenger evacuation rather than performing full operations.
“We can’t back up to all the energy needed to perform operations safely,” Heathrow said.
Before 2pm, engineers at National Grid, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said they were able to reconfigure the substations to power Heathrow again.
However, it took the airport several hours to be satisfied that its power source was reliable and that its electronics were back safely online. By 4pm, the airport announced plans to reopen, with the first flight scheduled to take off at around 7pm.
Heathrow is getting more pressure. It explains why it itself allowed it to be exposed to a single point of failure.
Dieter Helm, an infrastructure expert at Oxford University, said it was a “large wake-up call on all of our critical infrastructure and the lack of resilience in its interdependence.”
“It is blindly clear that energy infrastructure is number one target, just as the UK and Europe have made a massive awakening call on defense. In the face of serious security threats, more resilience is needed in the energy system.”
Heathrow’s CEO Thomas Woldbye claimed that the airport’s emergency response plan worked.
He said that while the airport can get power from two of the three substations that take power away, it would be “time-consuming” to move its electronic system to a rebuilt power supply.
Woldbye said: “We lost a large portion of our power source. This was a major severity incident. We lost power to a medium-sized city, and the backup system works as needed, but we don’t have the size to operate the entire airport.”
The plane that went into New Delhi and Los Angeles had to turn back ©Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Privately owned by a consortium of investors, Heathrow Airport is plagued by more than £19 billion in debt, and has long been asking whether it is effectively investing in finance and infrastructure from airlines.
Experts added that the fires underscore the need for the government to oversee the UK’s critical infrastructure. UK electricity, gas, communications, water networks, ports and airports are all located in private hand.
Noble Francis, president of Economics at the Construction Products Association, said: “Companies tend to spend time maintaining, updating and expanding their capabilities, but they need to be able to deal with one-off disruptions as resilience and large investments are required for basic infrastructure.”
This incident is because the UK is set to rely heavily on its electricity network as it seeks to move towards renewable-powered electric vehicles and heat pumps as part of its shift from fossil fuels. Connecting new wind farms and solar farms to homes and businesses requires enormous new capabilities.
Power networks around West London have been subject to intense scrutiny in recent years as their capabilities have not been able to meet demand. House builders have been warned of long delays to the project as a power-hungry data center installed near the fiber optic cable line.
Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, said the case asks the question: “This is vulnerable to a one-off incident, and whether there are other national infrastructure assets that are responsible for regulatory oversight, regardless of which portion of the government is personal.
Passengers who have delayed the world are asking more urgent questions: When will they enter the air? Sarah Jones, a retired employee who flies to Singapore with her husband at the Sofitel hotel near Heathrow, said: “Breakfast costs £66 for two, and the prices are rising as we talk.”
Additional Reports by Akila Quinio from Heathrow
