Yesterday (July 14th) was one heck of a day. Here’s what happened.
In the core of the financial district, an explosion and underground fire caused a major power outage in the city. It affected both our building and one of the main internet hubs on the West Coast, causing network problems in many areas.
Our building, Harbour Center, is a “carrier class” building and houses equipment from some of the largest internet and telephone companies in the industry. It’s equipped with all the backup and emergency systems available, including generators, dedicated cooling systems, and more.
Although our systems were completely up and running throughout all of this, the explosion affected major internet providers and severed the connection between us, which is why you couldn’t access your website or ours.
As the fire progressed, we stayed put, picking up the phones and trying to answer your questions…
Half a block from our office - Courtesy of Vancouver Sun
But eventually, smoke was coming out the back of our building and we were forced to evacuate.
Smoke coming out of our office tower - Courtesy of Vancouver Sun
Since everyone was forced from the building, we worked offsite to keep you updated on the situation.
Evacuated crowds - Courtesy of NowPublic.com
Emergency crews were working non-stop to get systems back to normal and internet connectivity was restored at around 4:30pm yesterday. We’ve been told that it should be mostly stable at this point, although there may be little spot outages here and there.
As a result of yesterday’s events, there may be delays receiving email and Support answers.
We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience caused by yesterday’s outage. Our tech team will be looking into solutions to prevent this kind of situation from affecting us in the future.
We’d also like to thank those of you that were checking in on us, making sure that we were safe during this unexpected event.