Fire outbreak at Cairo telecommunications’ data centre kills 4, disrupts internet

Four workers were killed and at least 22 others were injured in a fire that broke out yesterday at a key data centre in a  10-story Telecom Egypt building in Cairo. Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat, said that the outbreak caused disruptions to communications across the country’s capital.

The fire halted phone calls and disrupted internet access. Data from the internet monitoring group, Netblocks, indicated that Egypt’s network data showed national connectivity at 62% of the regular level. Other digital banking services were also impacted.

These include credit cards, ATMs and online transactions. Most banks were also closed for the day.

The outage also disrupted air traffic, but the civil aviation ministry said early Tuesday that all halted flights have taken off. The Egyptian Stock Exchange also halted trading on Tuesday due to widespread disruption impacting the efficiency of the trading system.

In a similar statement, Telecom Egypt said it is mourning four employees who lost their lives and offered support for their families. The 22 injuries were attributed to smoke inhalation, health ministry spokesperson Ghaffar said on Monday.

According to AP, some people who suffered smoke inhalation received treatment on site and didn’t require emergency transfers to hospitals. They were not included in the figures released by the health ministry.

The state news agency MENA reported that the fire had been prevented from spreading to the entire building and neighbouring rooftops, but the upper part of the building was charred. This morning, firefighters were seen spraying water as smoke billowed from the top floors, though the massive flames had been contained, according to an AP photographer on site.

Minister Amr Talaat added in his statement that all communications services will gradually be fully restored within 24 hours and that they were transferred to more than one switchboard to operate as an alternative network.