The power outage that has prevented trains from Utrecht and Amsterdam from running to Schiphol all day Tuesday may have been caused by sabotage. That was stated by outgoing Minister David van Weel (Justice and Security) at the NATO summit.
The trains failed due to a fire in the power cables near Schiphol. The fire started around 3:45 AM, a ProRail spokesperson told NU.nl earlier. Van Weel does not rule out sabotage. “That is one of the things we are investigating.”
Van Weel wonders aloud who could be behind the sabotage. “It could be an activist group, it could be another country. It could be anything. The most important thing now is to repair the cables and get the traffic moving again.” Sabotage actions around the NATO summit were already being taken into account.
ProRail is investigating the power outage and is taking “all possible scenarios” into account. The rail manager does not want to anticipate matters. It could also be, for example, copper theft.
The police are also keeping all scenarios open. The Forensic Investigation is present at the place where the fire broke out, but can only start the investigation once the voltage has been removed from the power wires.
A ProRail spokesperson calls the outage “very unfortunate” given the NATO summit. Because of that summit, a lot of important highways in the Randstad have been closed. An NS spokesperson cannot say whether it is busier on the trains as a result. She advises travelers to look for alternative transport to the airport. The NS is not deploying buses, because the consequences of the outage are too great for that.
Due to the power outage, no trains will run between Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam Central, Utrecht Central and Lelystad until 11:00 PM, the NS reports. There is also a disruption between Hoofddorp and Amsterdam Sloterdijk. Train traffic from Rotterdam, The Hague and Leiden to the airport restarted at 8:15 AM.