Tens of thousands of customers have been affected by fire and flooding at BT's Paddington Exchange in central London. It is believed that the fire was caused by an electrical fault which in turn was caused by flooding.
Many firms have put in place their telecoms contingency plans, among the many customers across the South East unable to make outbound or receive inbound phone calls and data since the incident took place yesterday morning.
On the cause of chaos, telecoms continuity provider Gematech offered the following: "A lot of the switching equipment is stored in the basement of the exchange. The building, like many others in London, has lower floors which sit below the water line. Pumps are installed so that should any of the water leak into the base of the building, the pump automatically kicks in to get the water out. This obviously didn't happen in the case of Paddington North yesterday, either because the pump was faulty or there was a more major kind of water leak.
"The water then caused a fire as it mixed with electrical equipment. Firefighters would then have had to put out the flames with more water, in turn exacerbating the situation."
It is unknown how long the BT exchange will take to be fixed and for services to return to normal.
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