Fire in backup power units at Czech Post data centre in Prague

What happened

On Saturday 12 May 2018, shortly before 10:00, a fire was reported in the server room of Czech Post (Česká pošta) in the basement of a building on Olšanská Street in the Žižkov district of Prague. The building's security guard had said no one was inside, but nine people were in the right-hand part of the building and were evacuated. Firefighters found the fire at the backup power units (uninterruptible power supplies) in the server room.

Two professional fire units and a volunteer unit attended. They disconnected the backup units, used a CO2 jet to cool and extinguish the fire, and checked the ceiling void. No ambulance was needed. Czech Post's website and online services were unavailable, and branches opened only for services that did not need a data connection. The fire investigator's preliminary damage estimate was 300,000 CZK. Online services were restored early on Sunday.

Contributing factors

The sources do not state the cause of the fire. The fire was located at the backup power units in the server room.

Lessons learned

1. Backup power units such as UPS systems need thermal monitoring and regular inspection, because a fault in them can be a fire risk in a server room.
2. Building security staff should confirm whether people are present near critical equipment before reporting a building empty, since an incorrect report of an empty building can delay evacuation checks.
3. Data-dependent services need a documented fallback, so that branches can keep serving customers when the central data centre is out of action.

More lessons on detection and monitoring, theft, arson and site security, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

blesk.cz