Openreach Restores Services After BT Exchange Fire in Bangor

Some broadband ISP and phone services in parts of Bangor (Gwynedd, North Wales) were disrupted yesterday after a fire broke out in BT’s exchange building at around 5:40pm, which perhaps mercifully sits just down the road from the local fire station and thus the incident was quickly brought under control. Nobody was hurt.

Pictures from the event (here and here) suggest that the fire may have gutted one section of the ground floor, which sits directly alongside the main entrance to the site. In a notice sent to UK ISPs last night, Openreach said the “fire impacted the power supply in our exchange,” while the North Wales Fire & Rescue Service clarified that the fire was the result of an “electrical fault in an external plant room.”

Openreach’s statement to ISPs continued: “The fire has been extinguished by the fire service and there are no reported injuries. However there have been impacts to our telephony services for a number of end customers. Our teams are on site and we are working on service restoration. We will of course be looking to resolve the situation and have all customers back in service as soon as possible, but at this stage we cannot give a full restoration timescale.”

The good news is that the vast majority of local phone and broadband services are now back online, although there may still be the odd connectivity problem for a few premises. Sadly, this incident comes only shortly after the building completed a full refit as part of a major modernisation programme, which was intended to create an improved workspace for the c.150 staff who work at the site. A bit more money may now need to be spent.