Shaw explosion causes communication chaos
Posted Jul 11, 2012 6:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
An explosion at the Shaw Building downtown has left many Calgary customers without cable, internet or phone service and forced the city to activate the Municipal Emergency Plan.
The explosion occurred shortly after 2:30 p.m. Wednesday in an electrical room at Shaw Communications’ downtown headquarters at Shaw Court, 630-3rd Ave. S.W.
No injuries have been reported.
Shaw President Peter Bissonnette tells the Herald, a fire broke out in a transformer on the 13th floor, but as the backup system came on, the sprinklers took it down as well.
He adds, water and electricity aren’t a good combination and the company apologizes for the breakdown.
Bissonnette said late Wednesday they still don’t know the cause of the fire, extent of the damage or how long service will be out.
A generator has been brought in to assist in restoring service and officials say they will begin their investigation once the power has been restored.
Roadways are open in the downtown core although there are some localized closures around the Shaw building. Those closures are expected to last overnight.
Emergency officials expect businesses in the downtown core to be operational on Thursday.
9-1-1 service is operating normally, although approximately 30,000 Shaw downtown landline customers are without phone service.
In the event those people need to contact 9-1-1, they are asked to use a cell phone or a neighbour’s phone.
For the City’s 3-1-1 contact centre, a temporary phone number has been set up for priority 3-1-1 requests.
The phone number is 403-695-3255 but there is limited capacity on this line.
The Director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency Bruce Burrell says a number of clients are still affected including Alberta Health Services.
“We have talked to Alberta Health Services and there is no compromising of any patient care because there are paper records for all the patients that are in the hospitals,” he says. “It does impact their data management system.”
Burrell says because Shaw is such a large company they have had reports of outages not only across the province but in other parts of Canada as well.
A large IBM Canada data centre and three Corus radio stations in the building were also affected.
For the latest on the Shaw Building fire click here:
