All right, welcome back.
You got to see this.
This is video to our monitors that tells the story
of a frightening scene in London and travel woes that
will last for days.
So here's what happened.
This fire broke out at Heathrow Airport.
This is an electric substation.
And after that ball of fire, it just knocked out
power and the airport is shut down for this day,
maybe even longer.
We're watching it.
So after that fire, as the substation sort of went
down without the flames, this is what it looked like
when the sun came up.
So far, investigators say no indication of foul play, although
counter terror officers are leading the investigation.
Glad to tell you nobody's injured.
Heathrow is the 5th busiest airport in the world.
So it goes without saying the shutdown equals chaos for
travelers all over the globe.
In fact, look at this, a map showing flights diverted,
at least 1300 trips cancelled or delayed and we expect
that number to only climb throughout the day.
This in fact was the alert heard on a commuter
train earlier to passengers as they were headed to the
airport.
Heathrow Airport is closed.
So at the airport, more troubles for the 220,000 people
slated to travel through Heathrow today.
The word for everybody, just stay away from the airport.
Everything's just up in the air.
It's pretty stressful and I'm worried about how much is
it going to cost me to fix this because I
don't know if it's going to be fixed for me.
I think I'm going to have to pay a lot
of money out of pocket.
We definitely want to come back, but for sure leaving
may have to pick out maybe a different airline or
two.
But our different airport, different airport.
Well, we've got reporters whenever news breaks.
And as proof of that, CBS News reporter Haley OTT
is outside Heathrow with more.
Haley, what are you seeing and hearing from officials and
what are you hearing from those passengers?
Hi.
Yeah, we actually have an update just now.
We've just heard from Heathrow Airport.
They've told us that some flights will be resuming later
today.
They're still advising people to not come to the airport.
And these are limited flights.
They say it's mostly about repatriating people who who couldn't
get to their final destinations.
But they say that some power has been restored to
the airport and and they've apologized for the inconvenience.
But we're we're seeing things hopefully to get a bit
back to normal.
I can see though, with that word, if people are
listening via television or streaming and they're hearing some flights
will resume, that people would go to the airport.
Is keeping them away from the airport just to keep
crowds controlled?
This is still very limited.
They're still trying to get all their systems up and
running.
They need to test everything once it gets back on
board.
So there's still a lot of work to do behind
the scenes and the flights are going to be limited
that they say are going to be resuming.
So the advice very much is to people who have
been affected by this, contact your airline.
Do not come to the airport and and wait and
have your airline tell you what you should do.
Check the alerts in the palm of your hands.
And I would imagine that that's good advice for those
of us who are in the United States as well,
who may be having those ripple effects.
Just check those alerts in the palm of your hand.
We also understand that the electricity in the surrounding area
was affected.
How did that affect people in their morning drive and
functioning this morning on a Friday?
Yeah, that was incredibly distressing for people.
Obviously, people in the area heard loud booms, saw flames.
It was scary.
And then thousands of people lost power to their homes.
We've also heard that a lot of that power has
now been restored.
It's not that the system itself has been totally fixed,
but the National Grid here, which is sort of operates
the power network network, has found a workaround.
So all those people who didn't have power in their
homes all morning this morning finally do again.
All right, Haley out, We appreciate that live report.
We thank you so much.
We hope that so many people can get back in
the air.