Crews still working to restore power after fire at Shaw HQ
Posted Jul 12, 2012 8:01 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The City has released an update on the situation after an electrical explosion and fire at the Shaw building downtown.
The fire on the 13th floor knocked out phone, internet, and cable access to about 20,000 customers Wednesday afternoon.
Some were left without the ability to call 911, the city’s 311 line was impacted and Alberta Health Services’ network was off line.
A back-up generator was installed late Wednesday night to restore power to the Shaw building and determine what businesses and networks remain affected.
City officials say the focus for the emergency response team is to assist Shaw and other impacted organizations in coordinating a response to the disruptions.
The city adds progress is being made, however, heat and water damage in the building are still safety concerns.
Updates are also coming down via Twitter Thursday morning, showing quite a few city phone line services are still feeling the effects of the outage.
Golf phone bookings, transit service and “Next Bus” info from the interactive phone line, recreational bookings and payments, and landfill weighing and cost calculator for dumping waste were not functioning as of 8 a.m. Thursday.
Despite these disruptions in service the City says 311 is fully operational again, as is the Access Calgary line.
Shaw Communications tweeted to remind customers that service and installation calls booked for Thursday will be rescheduled.
Just before 8 a.m., the company also tweeted it has almost fully restored residential phone service in the downtown core.
Additionally, Alberta Health Services continue to operate with pen and paper as their provincial network went down with the outage but surgeries and patient care have not been impacted so far.
