Fire at Shaw’s Calgary headquarters leads to communications blackout
Posted July 12, 2012 7:07 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thousands of people in Calgary, Alta., remain without phone service and Internet following an explosion and fire at Shaw Communications’ downtown headquarters.
The electrical fire happened in the building that is Shaw’s hub, so not only are landline telephones and television service down, but also 911 operations and the computer network at the city’s hospitals.
Bruce Burrell with the city’s Emergency Management Agency said the priority is to get them back online.
“I think the biggest, most critical issue that we’re trying to work on is the AHS network, so Alberta Health Services network is down currently,” Burrell said.
So far, the hospitals said it’s not affecting patient care, but that could change later Thursday morning once they get into the start of regular surgeries.
The blackout caused a huge ripple effect, not just in the city of Calgary, but across the province of Alberta.
“That building is a hub of information for a number of clients not just within the city of Calgary, but some of them are provincial and some of them affect our national companies,” Burrell said.
The telecommunications outage is also affecting some ATMs, and three radio stations are off the air.
