Fire destroys power room at Ghana data centre
Mon 2 Feb 2015
Data centre operations were brought down yesterday afternoon at the Surfline Data Centre in Tema, Ghana following a fire outbreak, reportedly caused by a major power outage.
According to Surfline, the fire completely destroyed the power room at the data centre leading to disrupted services for its 4G LTE network users.
The fire is thought to have started at Dennis House, the five-storey building which sits adjacent to the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and houses the Surfline data centre, at around 4pm yesterday afternoon. The building is also home to UT Bank Ghana and CAL Bank.
The Ghana National Fire Service responded quickly, but it took over four hours to extinguish the flames.
“Nobody was injured, but we do not know the extent of the damage at this time. Please bear with us as we assess the impact of this unfortunate incident and work to get the network back up to speed. We will continue to provide updates as we receive them. We appreciate your patience at this time,” the data centre provider released in a statement.
The company also published a Facebook message and sent out texts to its customers apologising for the disruption of services and promising users that it is working around the clock to restore the network.
The statement read: “We apologize for the current lack of network connectivity. This is due to a technical issue on our network. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible. The current outage on the network is due to a fire at our data center. Our team is working to resolve the issue. We will keep you updated.”
Fire crews were still inside the building this morning and Surfline teams have yet to be given access to the property.
The Surfline fire follows a string of similar outbreaks across Ghana, including incidents at the Tema Central Medical stores, the Tamale Teaching Hospital, the Kokompe Market, as well as the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) warehouse in the Volta Region.
