Electrical fire at power switch disrupts AT&T data centre

What happened

An electrical fire started at a power switch and burned primary and backup electrical systems at the 1666 Firman Drive data centre in Richardson, Texas. Two fire brigades attended to put out the fire. Internet and TV services for AT&T U-verse customers in the Dallas Fort Worth area were disrupted. A local report said services had been restored later the same day, though outage reports continued into the evening.

Contributing factors

A lightning strike may have caused the incident, though this was not confirmed by the operator.

Lessons learned

1. Where a fire can affect both primary and backup electrical systems, operators should review separation, detection and isolation so one event does not take out both paths.
2. Rapid detection and isolation of electrical faults can reduce the duration of customer service outages.
3. Clear public updates on restoration status help customers during a widespread outage, including when later outage reports still appear.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com