A fire that broke out in a parking garage at London Luton International Airport Tuesday night injured six with smoke and left flights suspended into Wednesday afternoon.

The fire started on the third level of the garage and spread to where approximately 1,200 cars were parked, the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service said.

The structure did not have sprinklers to mitigate the fire, BFR Chief Fire Officer Andrew Hopkinson said, according to the PA Media news agency, with the initial fire starting accidentally in a combustion-powered car. 

“We’ve got no intelligence to suggest it’s anything other than an accidental fire that started in one of the vehicles,” Chief Hopkinson said at the scene, Reuters reported.

The fire was put out by 8:45 a.m. local time Wednesday, according to BFR. An airport employee and four firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation and subsequently discharged from the hospital.

A sixth person was treated at the scene, according to The Associated Press.

Luton is located about 35 miles north of London, and the airport serves as “a hub for budget airlines such as easyJet, Ryanair and others,” AP said.

A passenger arriving back from Romania has been credited with first spotting the fire and calling emergency services at 8:45 p.m. local time Tuesday.

“I get my daughter, partner and luggage into the car and evacuate as quickly as possible. We could hear explosions as well and were worried about things flying off, like bits of shrapnel. As soon as we got in the car I headed for the exit as quickly as possible,” caller John Shaw told the BBC.

Luton Airport first posted a notice of the blaze in Terminal Car Park 2 on X at 9:35 p.m. local time Tuesday.

In subsequent updates, the airport announced that flights out of Luton were canceled into Wednesday afternoon, first until noon and then, as work continued to put out the blaze, until 3 p.m. local time Wednesday. 

BFR posted a video of the firefighting efforts on X.

Emergency services remained on the scene as of 2:02 p.m. local time Wednesday, with passengers beginning to reenter the terminal to depart and with parking availability reestablished in the airport’s “Long” and “Mid-Stay” parking areas.

Both arrivals and departures at Luton were impacted by the fire, with 42 departing flights and 65 arriving flights outright canceled Wednesday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. There were 13 departing flights and 12 arriving flights delayed due to the response to the fire.

From the time the fire started Tuesday night, at least 140 total flights in and out of Luton were canceled, according to the Evening Standard.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.