Fire Causes Outage at Toronto Carrier Hotel

A fire at a major carrier hotel in Toronto left several data center customers offline for hours over the weekend. Peer 1 Networks reported that a fire broke out at 2:26 a.m. Sunday (Eastern time) in an eighth-floor electrical room at 151 Front Street, the city’s primary telecom hub. The fire broke out in a section of Peer 1 Networks’ colocation facility housing UPS equipment, causing power to be shut off to the seventh and eight floors, and prompting a vigorous response from Toronto emergency services, which dispatched at least 17 fire units to the building.

“There was a fire which was localized to the 802 Suite UPS room within the 151 Front Street Facility,” Peer 1 reported on its forum. “The Fire Department mitigated the fire with dry chemical and CO2 extinguishers. No water was used, and all PEER 1 equipment (with the exception of the UPS), and ALL client equipment is unharmed.” Peer 1 said it was able to bypass the UPS system – which typically is positioned between the utility feed and the data center – and restore power to the affected areas by 5 a.m. Eastern time Sunday morning.

The first broke out two days after a more serious electrical fire at Seattle telecom hub Fisher Plaza that left many web sites hosted at the building down for more than a day.