Major Fire Rips Through Didcot Power Station

Firefighters are investigating the cause of a major blaze that took hold of Didcot Power Station last night.

The fire began in one of the gas-fired cooling stations and was described by Oxfordshire Fire And Rescue as "very serious".

Twelve fire engines, 65 firefighters and three hydraulic platforms were sent to the site around 8pm.

Officials at the RWE npower owned site managed to shut down the site quickly to stop the incident turning into an inferno.

The moment the power station came offline from the National Grid power was provided by another plant.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey insisted electricity supplies would not be affected and that engineers would work to get the site up and running as soon as possible.

"My priority is to understand the cause of the fire and get the affected unit back generating electricity as soon as it's safe to do so," he said.

Oxfordshire's chief fire officer, David Etheridge, said his team were hampered by high winds before bringing the blaze under control.

"It was a very serious fire. Our crews have been working very hard in very difficult conditions," he told Sky News.

"These fires are always very tricky for us. Water and electricity don't mix but we've worked with the site management on plans and we do exercises to make sure that when we do get an incident such as this we can all work seamlessly together to get it under control."

Thames Valley Police advised residents to close windows and remain indoors.

Site operators RWE Generation told Sky News no one had been injured. Spokesman Dan Meredith said: "We have taken the precaution to shut down safely the station and all our employees are accounted for."

He said the the fire was contained within the cooling tower module - there are a number of modules that form part of the site.

Mr Meredith added that an inquiry would be launched into how a blaze was allowed to begin in Station B, which opened in 1997 and can power millions of homes.

Zainab Mirmalek, who lives opposite the power station, said: "About 9pm you could see a massive blaze but now you can see loads of hoses, lots of steam and smoke and water gushing, though there is still lots of orange."

Natural gas powered Didcot B, which opened in 1997, generates up to 1,360 MWe of electricity - enough to power a million homes.