An “electrical incident” has occurred in a server center of the Internet giant Google. Three employees had to be hospitalized. Internet services were also down at times.
It was Monday night when an arc flash lit up the darkness around Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Three company electricians were working at a substation when the electrical explosion occurred. All three had to be hospitalized.
The local police confirmed this to “SF Gate”. According to authorities, all three were badly burned in the incident. One so heavy that the rescue workers flew him to a nearby hospital in a helicopter as quickly as possible. His two colleagues were also transported there by ambulance. According to the authorities, the three men are all conscious and responsive. Nothing else is known about their exact condition.
unrelated failure
Google also confirmed the incident. “We are aware that an electrical incident occurred at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, injuring three people. They are now being treated,” said a statement that the company sent to several US media. “The health and safety of our workforce is our absolute top priority and we are working with our partners and local authorities to carefully investigate the situation and provide support where necessary.”
The data center in Iowa is one of Google’s largest computing facilities. However, the accident is said to have had nothing to do with a failure of numerous services at night, which affected users in Germany and the rest of Europe in addition to the western United States, Google emphasized to “CNET”. When services such as Gmail, Google Maps and – an extremely rare exception – even Google search were temporarily unavailable in the early hours of the morning, this is said to have been related not to the incident but to a software error, according to the company. The disruption didn’t last long, after about half an hour the Google services were available again.
Sources: SF Gate, CNET
