Huge fire closes UK's Heathrow Airport; global flight schedules disrupted

Watched a live video. A huge transformer exploded probably due to a huge power surge. Hundreds of thousands of properties in the area are without power. Maybe Heathrow can bring in power generators. It will take weeks to replace the transformer. The UK is bad for power surges.

Flight chaos across the world with hundreds of planes forced to divert or turn around as London's Heathrow Airport shuts.

Be interesting to know what caused it.

Little green men?

Yes, I'm getting paranoid.

cleo

From my personal experience, I think a large transformer exploded which can be caused by several problems. Voltage surges are very common in the UK. There are other reasons like overheating and short circuits. The anti-surge equipment frequently fails.

Voltage surges are very common in the UK.

Very common? Perhaps they are, but lpower outages are extremely rare in my experience, so presumably are managed without interruption to the supply of power.

Very common? Perhaps they are, but lpower outages are extremely rare in my experience, so presumably are managed without interruption to the supply of power.

I have personal experience of power surges in the UK. I was in a control room that exploded from a 30,000-volt surge because the anti-surge equipment failed. Like I said there could be a few other reasons. The power companies deny there are any power surges.

What is your experience then?

Sounds very suspicious to me.

But Cleo, are you really back here again!?!?! Welcome indeed! We have missed you.

Hope it’s not the work of terrorists, don’t need any more of that stuff in London

Google map of the location

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4996008,-0.4123377,3a,47.1y,57.7h,92.75t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suphelZRoZcacjM9oZf0tcw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-2.7508228061769557%26panoid%3DuphelZRoZcacjM9oZf0tcw%26yaw%3D57.70425548551421!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMxOC4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDUzSAFQAw%3D%3D

No second off site to restore/backup, no power redundancy process in the event of a high risk event?

A backup generator at the same site was destroyed In the fire.

This will cost hundreds of millions of pounds in lost flights, cargo turning bad, and passenger compensation.

Heathrow should have its backup generators.

The business has backup, power on/off rack multiple levels, power disruption strategy for every data center.

It has a cost, however essential to provide 24/7 contractual customer service level

We are not an a global/european hub airport,

London Heathrow is not Charing Cross station, the risk to travellers safety is flipping obvious.

To locate a backup generator in the same location, is simply refusing to accept risk diversity policy.

The backup generator was for the grid system, not just Heathrow. Parliament needs to ask serious questions.

Coincidence that Stamer critciized Putin.

he has form with attacking sub sattions

UK energy secretary Ed Miliband....

“What it makes me believe is we’ve got to understand why this happened, and we’ve got to work out what the lessons are for the resilience of our infrastructure.”

Look, logic suggests, both Labour and the years of Conservative government have questions that need to be answered.

Privatisation?

British Airports Authority was formed in 1986, I understand that UK airports are now privately owned,

If so, safety concerns, the resource falls on a authoritative body?

If one takes off, I would like to have the confidence to know, where or if I am going to land?

"Ownership" ?

Counter-terrorism police probe Heathrow fire amid claims of Russian sabotage: Substation blaze fits the pattern of Putin's disruption attacks in Europe, and exposes 'vulnerability' in UK infrastructure, say experts.

Britain's decline just gets worse by the day.

The 70s were bad in the UK, but I don't remember anything like this happening. Airports were pleasant places with few passengers because hardly anyone could afford the fares. Along came Freddie Laker with his Skytrain tickets to NYC for 79 quid and travel was never the same again...

Seems the Brits got caught with their "risk mgmt." pants down, no excuses, just failure

There are vulnerable sites in all countries. Too many for security. The US also has a vulnerable infrastructure.

585,000 substations in total. 179 400 kV substations. 137 275 kV substations. All gride systems are vulnerable. That's why Putin attacks them in Ukraine.

Sub-stations go pop occasionally. We had a scheduled outage the other week whilst they fixed a part in our local one. Many flights will be able to switch to Gatwick, which is about 30 miles from Heathrow. Out of the UK's 40 airports, a dozen or so 'international' (longer runway + customs). Plenty of capacity.

Zero contingency. One of the worlds largest and busiest airports with no backup generator plan.

Many flights will be able to switch to Gatwick, which is about 30 miles from Heathrow. Out of the UK's 40 airports, a dozen or so 'international' (longer runway + customs). Plenty of capacity.

Gatwick handles 40 million passengers and 250,000 flights per year. Heathrow handles 84 million passengers with 475,000 flights.

Don't know where you got 40 international airports in the UK from, apart from Heathrow there are only 11.