Live updates: London’s Heathrow Airport shuts down after nearby fire causes major power outage

Accidents happen. Sometimes they have catastrophic, disproportionate consequences.

But the scale of worldwide travel disruption caused by one intense fire at an electricity substation serving London’s Heathrow airport will leave UK authorities keen to exclude any possibility of outside interference.

London’s Metropolitan police confirmed that its counter-terror division will lead the investigation, given the impact on national infrastructure – but there was “no indication of foul play.” Specialist officers have the skills and resources to quickly identify the cause of the blaze, the Met said.

Investigators will likely examine security camera footage, even nearby residents’ doorbell cameras, to see who was in the area when the fire started at around 11pm local time.

Given the scale of the impact, they will also likely comb the damage on site to see if the remarkable inferno was caused by anything other than a malfunction in the substation’s its own circuitry. Publicly, no such evidence has emerged.

The disruption comes at a busy time for security services across the continent. European cities have been targeted by saboteurs, some allegedly in the pay of Russia, over the past months. The UK’s forefront role in leading European opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will continue to make its infrastructure a potential target.

Whatever facts emerge from investigators, the incident puts the UK’s political leadership in something of a bind. They are faced with a choice between admitting, on the one hand, to decrepit UK infrastructure that can spontaneously catch fire putting a major airport out of action for hours, or the possibility that a rogue actor could inflict millions of dollars of disruption with, say, a cigarette lighter and a bottle of gasoline.

A recent government report on the UK’s electricity grid both praised its performance and suggested modernisation is needed. Last month’s report, by the National Infrastructure Commission, said: “Great Britain’s electricity distribution network is very reliable. Reliability has increased significantly since the 2010s and power cuts are rare events for most consumers.”