A mysterious power outage disrupted significant portions of London’s public transportation system today, sparking concerns about the stability of the UK’s energy infrastructure.
The outage led to the suspension of operations on four Underground lines and the Elizabeth line, with 20 stations closing down as a result of the disruption that occurred in South West London just before the busy afternoon commuting period.
Although the root cause of the power failure remains unknown, the incident has amplified existing worries about the reliability of power sources in the UK and raised questions about the potential involvement of foreign entities, particularly Russian operatives, in destabilizing the nation’s energy network.
A substation serving Heathrow Airport caught fire on March 21, forcing it to close to all flights for many hours and disrupting more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.
Then five weeks later a major blackout on April 28 in Spain and Portugal saw train passengers stranded and millions of people left without phone and internet access.
Just one day later another substation fire in London, this time in the Maida Vale area of the capital, saw around 80 people evacuated from their homes on April 29.
Today, no trains were running on the entire Bakerloo line, while the Jubilee line was axed between London Bridge and Finchley Road with severe delays on the rest of it.
The Northern line was part-suspended between Stockwell and Morden and between Euston and Kennington, and there was no service on the Waterloo & City line.
Meanwhile the Elizabeth line was part-suspended in the central section between Paddington and Abbey Wood, with severe delays on the rest of the line.
National Rail said services across the Elizabeth line may be cancelled, delayed by up to 50 minutes or revised until 5.30pm.
A loss of power to the overhead electric wires at Hackney Central was also impacting Mildmay line trains between Canonbury and Stratford. It was not immediately clear whether this was linked to the main power outage.
Separately, the Suffragette line on the Overground was completely suspended after a lineside fire damaged the overhead equipment at Woodgrange Park.
And another lineside fire between Clapton and Tottenham Hale was also impacting London Overground, Greater Anglia and Stansted Express trains.Â
Some 20 stations were closed or partially-closed across the TfL network due to the power outage.
These included key interchanges such as Paddington, Liverpool Street and Tottenham Court Road.
Other impacted stops were Baker Street, Charing Cross, Bond Street, Westminster, Embankment, Euston, London Bridge and Farringdon.
Woolwich, Whitechapel, Waterloo, Swiss Cottage, South Kensington, Putney Bridge, Abbey Wood, Canary Wharf and Custom House were also closed or partially closed.
The issue was caused by a power outage in South West London at about 2.30pm which has since been rectified but delays are ongoing.
The Transport for London (TfL) website was struggling to handle traffic this afternoon and began to crash from about 3.15pm.
TfL officials were seen directing passengers with suitcases away from Elizabeth line services at Paddington station, recommending buses across central London.
The Bakerloo line entrance was completely shut at Paddington, and TfL staff said they do not know when the entrance will reopen.
One said: ‘It was a power outage. The lights just went off, we don’t know anything else. It’s been about an hour-and-a-half now. We can’t say when it will be fixed.’
A spokesman for TfL told the PA news agency that there was an outage in South West London for ‘a matter of minutes’ and ‘everything shut down’ due to a ‘National Grid issue’.
He went on: ‘When the power goes out the trains will have stopped, obviously, there’s emergency power on trains and stations so everything wouldn’t have gone completely black, if you were on there, but the trains would have stopped and we would have cleared some stations because there’s no electricity it might not necessarily be safe for them to be open … some people would have probably been stuck in a tunnel for a little bit of time.’
TfL is in the process of ‘getting things back up and running again’
