Heathrow's lack of Resillience.

 The Big news this morning is that Heathrow Airport, the biggest in the country, will be closed for the day due to a fire at a local substation. The loss of the substation has caused a severe power outage at Heathrow. 

How?

How is the biggest airport in the country not supplied by multiple power sources, so that if they lose one, they can continue on the others? 

The running of Heathrow, after all, is a life-critical resource.

The GPS co-ordinates of the substation have no doubt been noted by bad actors. It will have also been noted that the UK's strategic resources are poor served by utility companies and that there are weaknesses around our defences, in that our airfields (within which I include military airfields) may be served by a single power source, leaving them vulnerable to attack once that resource is taken out. 

Reminds me of when I was given the job of Network Manager when I worked for ICL. 

I'd done all the costings, made sure that there was resilience in the network so the factory could continue working if a wire was cut. Not only building it into the design of the network, but also running duplicate cable lays so that back-up cables were already in place if it was just a cable that was cut. If part of the building was destroyed, then the network was designed so that traffic was automatically rerouted around the hole. 

But when it came to the external connections to the broader internet, we had no control over resilience. I'd written a report identifying this weakness and asked for permission and authority to investigate. I was refused, the managers saying that they had been told by BT that we had two connections. One down to and exchange in Manchester to the West and one running over the Pennines to the East. 

No proof was provided, we just took it on spec from BT that this was the case, with no investigation.

Months later a JCB digging up the pavement outside what would be an ALDI store dug through the fibre optic cables. We instantly lost all our internet connectivity.

It turned out that both our external lines were routed down that road to ICLs development premises at West Gorton, and THEN split into two separate channels. One of which went back along the very same pavement as our two supposedly resilient connections. 

Network connections to the factory were down for days. 

And I'm appalled that Heathrow doesn't have half a dozen connections to the power grid. One for every terminal (of which there are five) and a spare. All of which are managed automatically so that there is no loss of power if one is taken out,

But it seems conversations with utility companies on concepts like resilience and triple-redundant back-ups haven't progressed much past the Eighties...