Egypt faces significant telecom disruption as a Cairo data center fire claims four lives and injures over twenty
Four people were killed and more than 20 were hurt when a fire at a data center in Cairo shut down all of Egypt’s phone services.
Four workers were killed and at least 22 others were hurt in a fire at a big Telecom Egypt building in Cairo on Monday. The fire caused a communications crisis in some parts of the capital.
Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, a spokesman for Egypt’s Health Ministry, said that most of the injuries were caused by breathing in smoke.
The fire started at a key data center run by Telecom Egypt, which is the main fixed-line and internet service in the country. It was put out later that same day. But it caused a lot of problems, like stopping phone services, making it hard to connect to the internet, and even messing up digital payments.
NetBlocks, a company that keeps an eye on the internet, said that after the incident, connectivity across the country dropped to just 62% of usual levels. People all over Cairo had trouble connecting to the internet, and even though banks were closed for the day, ATMs and web transactions were still interrupted.
On Tuesday, Telecom Egypt said it was sorry for the deaths of its workers and promised to help their families. Amr Talaat, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, told the public that service repair was happening and would be done in 24 hours.
To deal with the problem, Egypt’s Health Ministry put out extra emergency phone numbers across the country’s governorates in case its main ambulance lines could not be reached.
According to the state-run MENA news agency, firefighters worked hard to keep the fire from spreading to the surrounding roofs and the whole building. A security source quoted by MENA said that the fire was probably started by an electrical short circuit based on early investigations.
As the country works to get back to full connectivity, the incident has brought up new worries about how vulnerable vital infrastructure is and the need for stricter fire safety rules in high-tech buildings.
