UK energy minister says Heathrow fire 'catastrophic'

21/3/2025 16:17

The fire at a power sub-station which shut down London's Heathrow Airport also took out the hub's back-up power generator, energy minister Ed Miliband said, calling the blaze "catastrophic".



Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe which was due to fly 290,000 passengers on Friday, will be shut until midnight due to a fire last night.



"There are back-up mechanisms in place but given the scale of this fire the back-up mechanisms also seem to have been affected," Miliband told Sky News on Friday.



"There was a back-up generator but that was also affected by the fire which gives a sense of how unusual and unprecedented it was."



He said that National Grid was working to restore power using another back-up system and the government would seek to understand what had caused the fire and any lessons it could learn for Britain's infrastructure in future.