West London fire leaves residents shocked and passengers stranded

A fire in West London has thrown the city into chaos after burning through a power transformer.

Transcript

00:00These were the dramatic scenes from Haze in West London on Friday morning.

00:11The fire, which teared through a local power substation, has subsequently led to worldwide

00:19travel chaos as Heathrow Airport's power supply went dark in the night, leaving thousands

00:26of passengers stranded, flights cancelled and diverted.

00:32The airport cancelled all flights on Friday.

00:36The cause of the fire is still unknown, and of course under investigation.

00:43The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said on Friday there is quote-unquote no reason at all to

00:52suspect foul play.

00:55However, it is important to acknowledge that the Mayor's comments came after the Metropolitan

01:02Police confirmed its Counter-Terrorism Command Unit was leading the investigation into the

01:08cause of the fire.

01:11The local area suffered a complete and total blackout, with buildings losing power, streetlights

01:19switching off and even traffic lights failing.

01:23Just before 12 this morning we just had a massive explosion and then like all the power

01:28went off.

01:29So I've gone back to my parents room, that's like the front of the house, and we can just

01:33see a massive fire.

01:34It smelled, it just smelt like burning.

01:35Because where we live on this side here, we live in Blair Close, which is just back onto

01:40the shops.

01:41So we were like, oh my God, is it someone's house, is it like the new, is it like one

01:46of the shops?

01:47Because we couldn't kind of work out where it was coming from until like this morning

01:51when it was the local news that it was the electric centre.

01:54Obviously, living around the corner we saw the fire, but it wasn't until this morning

01:59until local news actually said it was the power station that we actually knew what actually

02:05had exploded.

02:06So we've got power now, but I would say we didn't have power from about 12-ish until

02:11about 3.

02:13Sure, so I did see on the news that everything that happened at the airport was closed.

02:19I'm flying out to Dubai today, my flight's meant to be at 12.40, and I've been checking

02:25the news and the websites and my emails, and I'm flying with BA, and they had said that

02:32we should keep an eye on our manage my booking, and it would give us an update as to what

02:35was happening with our flights.

02:37So I got a message to say my flight was departing, and that I can go ahead as normal.

02:43So I've come to the airport to make the flight, which I was told was flying today, and I can't

02:49get to the actual airport.

02:51Questions have been raised around how such an event could cause such catastrophic disruption.