I read it was a small fire in a distribution panel
if the panel serves your mains and back up
or you have back up generators located near
to mains panel then you really don't have a
back up as you either have a single point of
failure or single location of failure.
Hopefully the Head of Engineering or whoever
will get to root cause.
in these circumstances I am sure the staff
worked under great pressure and as u say shud be praised.
Obviously this should not have happened though. I am not going to gush about Robert Simclair tho - that's his job and he shud lead from the front. When I worked for BA all senior managers and directors wud be in the thick of it with you in a mass disruption situation.