Britain's Heathrow Airport was shut on Friday after a huge fire at a nearby substation knocked out its power, stranding passengers around the world and angering airlines who questioned how such crucial infrastructure could collapse, reports Reuters.

Huge orange flames and plumes of black smoke shot into the sky around 11 p.m. (2300 GMT) on Thursday as a blaze engulfed the substation, cutting the power supply and back-up system for Europe's busiest and the world's fifth-busiest airport.

Airline experts said the last time European airports experienced a disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic ash cloud that grounded some 100,000 flights.

The industry is now facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds.

"You would think they would have significant back-up power," one top executive from a European airline told Reuters.

The fire brigade said the cause of the fire was not known, but that 25,000 litres of cooling oil in the transformer had caught fire. It had brought the blaze under control by the early morning with the transformer doused in white firefighting foam. Energy Minister Ed Miliband said it did not appear to be foul play.

Heathrow had been due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers. The closure forced flights to divert to other airports in Britain and across Europe, while many long-haul flights simply returned to their point of departure.

Passengers stranded in London and facing the prospect of days of disruptions were scrambling to make alternate travel arrangements.

"When we first came here, (it was) very exciting and hopeful," said Beau Mahr, 21 from the U.S. state of Iowa. "Now that we have to wait, it's kind of stressful."

Industry experts warned that some passengers forced to land in Europe may have to stay in transit lounges if they lack the paperwork to leave the airport.

Global flight schedules will also be affected, as aircraft and crews will now be out of position, forcing carriers to rapidly reconfigure their networks.

Prices at hotels around Heathrow also leapt, with booking sites offering rooms for 500 pounds ($646), roughly five times the normal price levels.

"Passengers are advised not to travel to the airport and should contact their airline for further information," Heathrow said, adding that the airport would be shut until midnight on Friday. "We apologise for the inconvenience."

CHAOS AHEAD

Airline executives, electrical engineers and passengers questioned how Britain's gateway to the world could be forced to close by one fire, however large.

Pictures on social media showed the airport terminal in near darkness during the night.
Experts in power supply said the type of fire that erupted overnight was extremely rare, adding that the whole substation likely had to be shut down to fight the blaze.

But they added that there should be sufficient alternative supplies to get everyone back on-line quickly.

"We can be fairly confident they will be able to restore by tomorrow," said Nicholas Rigby, a commercial engineer at NRG Management Consultancy.

Miliband said the "catastrophic" fire had prevented the power back-up system from working and that engineers were trying to deploy a third back-up mechanism.

"With any incident like this we will want to understand why it happened and what if any lessons it has for our infrastructure," he told Sky News.

At least 37 flights operated by airlines jetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air, Qantas, United Airlines, IAG-owned British Airways and Virgin were diverted or returned to their origin airports in the middle of the night, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium.

"Heathrow is one of the major hubs of the world," said Ian Petchenik, spokesman for flight tracking website FlightRadar24. "This is going to disrupt airlines' operations around the world."

British Airways, the biggest carrier at Heathrow, had 341 flights scheduled to land there on Friday.

MSH

At least 34 people, including two babies were killed when a contraband fuel depot exploded into flames in southern Benin near the border with Nigeria on Saturday.

According to Beninese Interior Minister Alassane Seidou, “a serious fire occurred in the town of Seme Podji. Another 20 people were seriously wounded in the incident.”

"I can't really give you the cause of the fire, but there is a large gasoline warehouse here and cars, tricycles and motorcycles come from morning to evening,” he added.

Nigeria is a main oil and gas producer where fuel smuggling is very common along its borders, particularly when the government maintains a subsidy to keep fuel prices low.

The majority of the victims were burnt and they could not be not be identified.

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).