A fire is menacing two of the country’s biggest data centre operators.
Teraco and Hetzner on Thursday confirmed that the building in which their Cape Town data centres is housed was on fire on Thursday.
“We are in contact with the fire department who have evacuated the building and they are in process of containing the fire. Current information at hand is that the fire is under control,” Teraco said.
“We are monitoring the environment from our Johannesburg and Durban sites and doing as much as we can to maintain uptime,” it added.
“The fire is on the roof, we are located in the basement. However, if it spreads we may have to shut off power to assist the firefighters to do their work.”
The building also contains infrastructure owned by another data centre provider, Hetzner. In a notice to customers, Hetzner said an electrical fire had broken out in the Great Westerford building.
“The fire is on the third floor with the fire brigade in attendance with multiple vehicles on site and busy extinguishing the fire. Hetzner’s data centres are located in the basement of the building and as yet remain unaffected by the fire. We are closely monitoring the situation with contingency plans in place should the fire continue unabated.”
Meanwhile, Cape Town fire chief Ian Schnetler said that firefighters were on the scene.
“I can confirm that there is a fire in a double-storey building but we are waiting for further report backs,” he said. “At this point we have no reports of injuries.”
It was reported that the fire started on the roof of the building at around 8.45am.
City of Cape Town mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith said the fire was not related to the Muizenberg fire that broke out over the weekend. “This is a separate incident, the fires are not related,” he said.
Smith could not provide more details. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media, with Sapa