London: One of the world’s busiest airports, an electrical substation near London’s Heathro Airport, occurred late on Thursday night, causing the airport to close the entire day on Friday. At this time, about 120 flights were preparing to land at the Heathro Airport. More than 1,350 flights were canceled at the airport on Friday or their route was changed due to the fire incident, causing more than three lakh passengers to be trapped. In addition, the anti -terrorism police have also started investigating the suspicion that the Russians may have vandalized the power station.
A sudden fire broke out late on Thursday night in a transformer of North Hyde Electric Substation, two miles from Heathro Airport in London. The fire department deployed more than 70 vehicles to extinguish the fire. However, the fire department took about seven hours to control the fire. However, even after more than 14 hours, smoke was rising from the power house and the fire was not completely extinguished. As soon as the fire broke out, hundreds of tourists were taken out of the airport safely. Since the Heathro Airport is supplied electricity from this electric substation, the authority was forced to close its busiest airport for 24 hours. Energy Secretary E.D. Miliband said that the cause of the fire in the substation is not yet known.
The airport authority said, “We believe that the effect of today’s incident will last for the next few days.” Thousands of passengers got trapped due to disruptions of hundreds of flights. Heathro is one of the world’s busiest international airports. In January this year, more than 6.3 million passengers traveled from the airport. Compared to the previous year, tourists were more than five percent in the same period this year.
National Rail also canceled all the trains coming and going from the airport. Hundreds of flights coming from America, Singapore, Taiwan and China had to return by half the way. Air India said it had canceled all its flights to London’s Heathro Airport for 24 hours. One flight returned to Mumbai, while the other was sent to Frankfurt and other flights were temporarily canceled.
The Heathro Airport of London usually starts operations at 6 am, as the movement of flights at night is banned. This means that the airport remained closed till 11.59 pm on Friday night. Work will start regularly from 6 am on Saturday. However, on Friday evening, Heathro’s Terminal 4 came to light. The National Grid said that power supply has been restored on temporary basis. However, today the airport will remain closed.
An estimated 16,000 houses were lost due to disrupting power supply due to fire in a substation. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said in a post on X that about 16,300 houses do not have electricity. Emergency services were immediately operational. But the real cause of the fire is not clear. The fire transformer was caused by bursting, but it is not known why the transformer exploded. The video of the horrific fire in the substation went viral on social media.
