Oh no..
A fire erupted at a data centre located in Loyang on Tuesday morning (Sep 10), with firefighters persisting in their operations even a day after the incident began.
The blaze ignited at the Digital Realty data centre at 3 Loyang Way around 7.45 am, as confirmed by the company. The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was notified about the situation at 8 am.
SCDF stated, “The fire involved lithium-ion batteries housed in battery rooms on the 3rd floor of a 4-storey building. SCDF deployed four water jets to tackle the fire, and the sprinkler system was activated,” They mentioned that approximately 20 individuals had evacuated the building prior to the arrival of the firefighters, and fortunately, no injuries were reported.
As of 9 pm, an unmanned firefighting robot was employed for damping down operations aimed at cooling the batteries affected by the fire. SCDF added, “This is expected to be a prolonged operation.”
SCDF updated CNA on Wednesday morning, stating that damping down operations were still underway.
Digital Realty, an international real estate firm managing data centres, owns three facilities in Singapore: two in Loyang and one in Jurong. The company’s response protocol was promptly initiated once the fire alarm was triggered.
In their response to CNA, Digital Realty assured, “All on-site personnel were safely evacuated by 8.15 am, and no injuries have been reported. We quickly notified and instructed affected customers to activate their business continuity plans.” However, the company declined to name the specific clients impacted by the fire.
W.Media, a tech publisher specializing in cloud and data centre news, noted “significant disruptions” experienced by companies such as Lazada and Bytedance. Alibaba Cloud confirmed their services were affected due to high temperatures affecting the network connectivity of some of their cloud products. They warned that if the temperature increase was not controlled effectively, there might be a complete network outage in Availability Zone C of Singapore – one of Alibaba Cloud’s three availability zones in the country.
Alibaba, Lazada, and Bytedance were contacted by CNA for further details on the impact of the fire.
