The firefighters of Hayes, in western London, received the call to investigate the smoke which amounts to the North Hyde substation of the region around 11:20 p.m. Thursday and rushed to the site less than two kilometers from Heathrow airport.
In a few hours, one of the most popular airports in the world was Closed to all air trafficInbound planes from New Delhi and Los Angeles turned back, and the recriminations had started.
“How is it so critical infrastructure – of a national and global importance – depends completely on a single source of power without an alternative, “asked Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, the Hall of Airlines, and a former director general of British Airways, which was a long -standing critic of the airport.
The question of how a fire in a single substation could bring one of the largest airports in the world to stop around Whitehall.
Although the cause of ignition is not known, the ferocity of the fire powered by 25,000 liters of cooling oil inside the sub-station transformer seems to have been sufficient to damage the backup transformers on site.
This was enough to eliminate the entire substation which provides electricity to terminals 2 and 4 to Heathrow In addition to lighting on the slopes, triggering such disarray at the airport, he decided to close completely.
Heathrow’s Diesel Fire Backup Generators worked as planned. But these are in place to ensure that it can make the foundations such as landing plans and evacuate the passengers, rather than executing a complete operation.
“It is not possible to have backup for all the energy we need to manage our operation safely,” said Heathrow.
Shortly before 2 p.m., the engineers of National Grid and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, said they had reconfigured the sub-station so that it is able to provide Eathrow again.
But it took several hours for the airport to be convinced that its power source was reliable and that its electronics were back in complete safety. Just after 4 p.m., the airport announced its intention to reopen and the first flights had to take off around 7 p.m.
But the pressure increases on Heathrow to explain why it allowed itself to become exposed to a single failure point.
Dieter Helm, an infrastructure expert at the University of Oxford, said it was a “huge alarm clock concerning the lack of resilience in all our critical infrastructure and its interdependence”.
“Just like the United Kingdom and Europe had a massive defense awakening, it is blindly obvious that the energy infrastructure is target number one. You need much more resilience in the energy system if you face a serious security threat.”
Thomas WOLDBYE, CEO of Heathrow, said the airport planning operated.
He said that the airport could work on the energy of the two of the three remaining stations, but migrate on its electronic systems to restructured food “takes time”.
WoldBye said: “We have lost a large part of our power supply … This was an incident of major severity. We have lost power equal to that of a medium -sized city and our backup systems worked as they should, but they are not sized to manage an entire airport.”
Heathrow airport, which belongs to an investor consortium, is struggling with more than 19 billion pounds of debt and has long faced the questions of airlines on its finances and if it has effectively invested in its infrastructure.
Experts have added that the fire highlights the need for the government to supervise critical infrastructure in the United Kingdom, more of which is private property than in any other country in the world. The electricity, gas, telecommunications and water networks of the United Kingdom as well as ports and airports are all in private hands.
Noble Francis, Director of the Construction Economy Products Association, said: “Companies tend to spend on maintenance, renewals and expansion in capacity, but for fundamental infrastructure, there must be significant investments in resilience and contingency so that they can deal with major occasional disruptions.”
The incident occurs while the United Kingdom should rely more on electricity networks because it tries to move to electric cars and heat pumps powered by renewable energies, as part of the lag of fossil fuel. A new enormous capacity is necessary to link new wind farms and solar farms to houses and businesses.
Electricity networks in western London have been the subject of a meticulous examination in recent years, because the capacity has failed to meet demand. House manufacturers have been warned of long delays for projects as power -swallowed data centers installed near the fiber optic cable lines.
Tony Travers, professor at the London School of Economics, said that the incident raises the question of “if there are other national infrastructure assets which are also vulnerable to a single incident and what part of the government is responsible for regulatory surveillance, even if they are private.”
Passengers delayed in the world have a more urgent question: when will they go in the air? “We are stuck here without any other alternative than to eat at the hotel,” said Sarah Jones, a retiree to fly to Singapore with her husband, at the Sofitel Hotel near Heathrow. “Breakfast costs £ 66 for two … and Prices go As we are talking about.
Additional reports by Akila Quinio in Heathrow
