Some of Oxford St & Soho without BB

[Glenn]

A flood and fire in one of BT's major exchanges in London's west end has left stores on Oxford Street and Regent Street unable to process card payments in the last few shopping days before Christams.

The small blaze overnight at the Gerrard Street facility in Soho has left thousands of businesses without broadband and telephone access. BT has posted a picture of the damage here.

The electrical fire was caused by water, which BT said came from premises adjacent to the exchange*.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/21/bt_fire/

[pctech]

Oh dear.

That won't be fixed overnight.

[DorsetBoy]

Stop putting equipment in basements ...........

[pctech]

Stop putting equipment in basements ...........

It is the most secure place.

[DorsetBoy]

It is the most secure place.

and the one most likely to suffer flooding and water damage.

[pctech]

There is that.

[kinmel]

That fuse didn't do it's job, did it !

[Glenn]

That was my 1st thought too, Alan

[kinmel]

If you look at the first photo in that set of three on Flickr there has been a short to the earthed trunking from all 3 power phases and still no fuses blew.

Photo 3 shows how deep the water was, if the equipment itself has no redundancy, then surely the basement would have massive drains, or pumps.

Surely

and the cause is not water entering from adjoining premises, but failure to protect critical infrastructure from foreseeable event.

[Rik]

This is BT we are talking about.

[DorsetBoy]

The third image is from the March 2010 fiasco at Paddington Green, not this event but does illustrate the risks of positioning in an underground tank.

[Glenn]

Recently the Shell building in London had it's basement flooded, Shell declined to comment if the servers located there were affected. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/19/shell_centre_eels/

[Rik]

Left hand and right hand?

[esh]

Force them to store all their servers at the bottom of a lake. They'll have to account for leaks then!


Right?

[Rik]

Or fit snorkels.