Fire at Northampton substations cuts power to thousands and prompts evacuations

A fire broke out at around 21:15 BST at two electricity substations on Semilong Road in Northampton, England, on the Thursday evening. The fire service said the cause was an electrical accident. Twelve people were evacuated from nearby homes. Residents in the area reported a smell of burning plastic and were asked to keep windows and doors closed. Western Power Distribution said power was interrupted to 4,831 homes, with supply restored to 3,500 of these after about two and a half minutes. A low voltage cable fault left around 339 homes still without power at breakfast time the following morning, with the company working to restore supply. Fire crews from across Northampton attended alongside police and sprayed water on nearby buildings to protect them. No injuries were reported.

Northamptonshire Fire Service attributed the cause to an electrical accident. Continued outages after the fire were linked to a low voltage cable fault.

1. Substation fires can cause both an immediate loss of supply and a longer tail of outages, so the emergency response and the restoration effort need to be run as separate workstreams.
2. Clear public advice on smoke exposure, including keeping doors and windows closed, helps protect nearby residents during electrical fires at substations.
3. Where network switching allows supply to be transferred quickly, most customers can be restored within minutes, but residual faults such as damaged low voltage cable can leave a smaller group off supply for many hours.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56769940