London's Heathrow airport closed after fire causes major power cut

Heathrow Airport is Europe's busiest, handling implicit 80 cardinal passengers a year. Photo: Adrian DENNIS / AFP/File
Source: AFP

Britain's Heathrow airport, Europe's busiest, was unopen down aboriginal Friday aft a large occurrence astatine an electrical substation supplying powerfulness to the sprawling installation westbound of London, officials said.

Airport authorities said they "expect important disruption" implicit the coming days, with hundreds of flights and thousands of passengers affected.

"Heathrow is experiencing a important powerfulness outage," the airdrome relation said successful a connection connected its website, adding it would beryllium closed until conscionable earlier midnight Friday (2359 GMT).

"Passengers should not question to the airdrome nether immoderate circumstances until the airdrome reopens."

London Fire Brigade said determination had been a "significant" occurrence astatine a substation successful Hayes, a adjacent municipality successful the London borough of Hillingdon.

Images connected societal media -- which could not instantly beryllium verified by AFP -- showed immense flames and fume rising from the substation.

Other videos, seemingly changeable wrong Heathrow's terminals, showed shuttered shops and deserted corridors, lit lone by exigency lighting.

"The occurrence has caused a powerfulness outage affecting a ample fig of homes and section businesses, and we are moving intimately with our partners to minimise disruption," said London Fire Brigade adjunct commissioner Pat Goulbourne.

He said the occurrence was archetypal reported astatine 11:23 p.m. (2323 GMT).

"This is simply a highly disposable and important incident, and our firefighters are moving tirelessly successful challenging conditions to bring the occurrence nether power arsenic swiftly arsenic possible," a connection said.

British inferior steadfast Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said connected its website that an "unplanned outage" had near much than 16,000 homes without powerfulness successful the area.

80 cardinal a twelvemonth

Heathrow handles much than than 80 cardinal passengers a twelvemonth and the relation says determination are astir 1,300 takeoffs oregon landings a day.

The website FlightRadar24 reported a fig of diversions already, including a Qantas formation from Perth, Australia, sent to Paris, and a United Airlines formation from New York, which volition onshore successful Shannon, Ireland.

In January, the authorities gave support for Heathrow to physique a 3rd runway -- which could beryllium acceptable by 2035 -- aft years of ineligible wrangling brought connected by complaints from section residents.

Five large airports service the superior and towns nearby.

But capableness is stretched, particularly astatine Heathrow whose 2 runways each measurement astir 4 kilometres successful length, portion the airdrome covers a full country 12.3 quadrate kilometres.

It opened successful 1946 arsenic London Airport earlier being renamed Heath Row, a hamlet demolished 2 years earlier to marque mode for the construction.

Situated 25 kilometres (15 miles) westbound of cardinal London, the contiguous Heathrow serves 200 destinations successful much than 80 countries, with passengers having entree to 4 terminals.

Among its main formation destinations past twelvemonth were Dublin, Los Angeles, Madrid and New York.

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Source: AFP