Suspected deliberate fire at quarry substation cuts power in Staines

What happened

Almost 600 people in the Staines area of Surrey lost power on the night of Wednesday 6 September 2017. Surrey Police said the outage was due to a fire at a quarry electricity substation. Officers were called to London Road quarry at around 11pm after it was engulfed in flames. Police said they believed suspects had gained access to the site and forced entry to the substation, causing extensive damage, and that the site had been targeted deliberately. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks confirmed that 583 people were affected. The power cut began at 10.20pm and power was restored by 11.40pm. The report did not mention any injuries.

Contributing factors

Police believed the site had been targeted deliberately. They said suspects were thought to have gained access to the quarry and forced entry to the substation, causing extensive damage. How the fire started was not reported beyond that police view.

Lessons learned

1. Review perimeter security, locks and detection of forced entry at substations on sites such as quarries.
2. Treat a police view of deliberate damage as a prompt to check access control and alarm response, without waiting for a final cause.
3. Plan how local supply can be restored after substation damage. Here, power was reported restored in about 80 minutes, though the means of restoration was not stated.

Source

getsurrey.co.uk