Blaze in April

HUNDREDS of homes, businesses, and large parts of the transport network were plunged into chaos due to a fire in an electricity substation, for the second time in under a fortnight.

The second mystery fire in Cunningham Place and Aberdeen Place, Lisson Grove, took down a chunk of the Bakerloo, Waterloo and City, Suffragette and Weaver lines on the London Underground and Overground on Monday afternoon.

It caused a power cut that forced Transport for London to close stations including Marble Arch, Tottenham Court Road, South Kensington and Covent Garden. Electricity to people’s homes was also shut down in the blackout.

Resident Shirin Valipour said: “I called the fire brigade… All electricity went out suddenly. How can the same place catch fire twice? This is scary.”

High-voltage cabling in the substation was destroyed that once again caused oil to leak into the Regent’s Canal, leading to a two-mile stretch of the waterway down to Camden Town being shut for two days, again, for the second time in two weeks. The Extra was told by canalboat residents that there had been a huge police response to the first fires.

At least 80 residents had to be evacuated during the fire on April 29.

Two other parts of the country were hit by major substation fires on May 11 in Exeter and Liverpool, where hundreds of homes were also evacuated.

London Fire Brigade said that they believed the cause of this week’s blaze was “accidental” and government spokespeople have said that there is no evidence of foreign interference.

As reported in the May 2 Extra: oil pollution on the canal after April’s blaze

But speculation is growing that a series of blazes at electricity substations in recent weeks may in some way be connected.

At Heathrow in March, thousands of flights were cancelled after back-up generators were unable to provide power to keep the airport open after a fire at a nearby substation in Hayes.

Electricity substations are vital parts of the power grid that facilitates the distribution of electricity by converting voltage levels and managing power flow.

They act as junctions between electricity generation and distribution, providing a power supply to homes and businesses.

UK Power Networks, the distribution network operator in London, said on its website that the “unplanned power cut” was because of a fault on “a piece of our electrical equipment” at 2.20pm on Monday, about the same time that the tube suffered its “blip”.

A spokesman for Transport for London said there had been an outage for “a matter of minutes” and that “everything shut down”.

Monday’s fire began at 2.11pm and crews from Paddington and Harrow brought it under control by 5.45pm.

LFB station commander Paul Meyrick said: “There was light smoke in the vicinity of the substation fire so residents were advised to keep windows and doors shut.” Three metres of high-voltage cabling connected to the substation was completely destroyed, LFB said. No injuries were reported.

A National Grid spokesperson said: “We apologise for any inconvenience following a fault on our transmission network in central London…

“The fault was resolved within seconds and did not interrupt supply from our network, but a consequent voltage dip may have briefly affected power supplies on the low-voltage distribution network in the area.”