More than 20 firefighters and police officers are still at the scene with several roads still closed.
The fire, which broke out in Kingsway, Holborn, resulted in the evacuation of 5,000 people from nearby buildings – with no reported injuries or fatalities so well done to the authorities – many of which are still without power. Many witnesses reported having difficulties in breathing amid chaotic scenes in Holborn.
Given that the London Fire Brigade (LFB) described the fire as “technically difficult” to tackle, it’s merciful that such fires are fairly rare. And a marvel too when you consider – and few of us do, I’m sure – that beneath our pavements run a network of high voltage cables, fuse boxes and other electrical equipment.
“Being underground in a confined space makes these fires hard to fight and, as you know, water and electricity don’t mix so all the power would have been isolated – so lots of disruption,” says Martin Norris, sales director for life safety products at Xtralis.
LFB Assistant Commissioner Peter Cowup said: “This has been a technically difficult incident to tackle. The reason that the fire is still burning is because the service tunnel is hard to reach.
“Although firefighters have been applying water through access points throughout the night, the complexity of the tunnel layout means that it will be some time until the fire is fully extinguished.”
Although the fire’s cause is still unknown, Martin Norris was happy to speculate.
“I think the fire was probably started in a joint on one of the high voltage cables that run in cable tunnels around London,” he says. “If you look up in London you don’t see pylons like in the countryside; everything runs underground.”
Many cities in less developed countries are much like our countryside in this respect, albeit the mess of cables that criss-cross the urban environment are rather untidier than those you might see in the Cotswolds.
01/04 1625 Assist @LondonFire & @metpoliceuk with downlink of #HolbornFire images – note heat from drain covers ^SH pic.twitter.com/P078RJ0uFe
— NPAS Redhill (@NPAS_Redhill) April 1, 2015
“Where these cables join can be a weak spot and any faults can result in a slow overheat that eventually flashes over into a fire,” continues Norris.
Modern detection systems are increasingly adept at detecting smoke so early that even the need for a fire brigade is often negated – potentially saving businesses and the taxpayer a decent sum of money.
“At Xtralis we use our Vesda technology to detect smoke at a very early stage in the fire, sometimes so early that we can generate alarms to indicate maintenance is required rather than the fire brigade,” says Norris.
“Vesda buys time to investigate, do a shutdown and restore an operational business without the disruption of a fire. We use our systems within escalators on transport systems, in cable tunnels in power stations and on conveyors in airports etc – always detecting before a major fire.”
Speaking to BBC London 94.9, Inspector Neil Johnson of the Met Police said: “The fire is still live in the subway. The problem at the moment is there is a gas pipe underneath and we are all in agreement that it is OK and if we can keep it contained it will be fine.
“All we need to do is keep people out of the area and let the fire brigade and utilities do their job.”
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Watch out – here come the conspiracy theorists…
ifsecglobal http://twitter.com/MICCLtd/status/583715278774730752/photo/1
To deal with any underground fire is very difficult especially with large expanses of large ducting. My admiration goes out to the officers who had to make the decision on how to deal with this incident, It would have probably been less traumatic for the public if the ducts had been sealed and high expansion foam used with venting at the opposite end to which the foam was inducted. I tried this method on ducting at a main power station some years ago with great success. all be it a smaller area. with such a large area perhaps multiple injection points… Read more »