Early Sunday morning, a fire broke out near an AT&T facility in Gardena's Harbor Gateway area, and the blaze burned the building's attic and lasted for roughly five hours, making it difficult to contain. Those living in Los Angeles County may have experienced service disruptions due to the damage to the carrier's critical infrastructure. Even the emergency services faced interruptions as a result, leading to thousands of residents in the area facing mobile service and internet disruptions. So those who went through the inconvenience know that you were not alone.
AT&T service outage over the weekend is tied to Gardena facility fire – what happened and why it matters
The weekend was hard on thousands of AT&T customers for the disruptions in services faced across Los Angeles County, which were not limited to the network alone but to the internet as well as emergency services after a fire broke out at one of the main facilities of the carrier in Gardena, California. The incident ignited early Sunday morning around 4:30 a.m., when the fire in the bushes expanded into the building's attic and impacted critical power infrastructure. The fire was difficult to contain, resulting in a small explosion and the roof collapsing.
Roughly 100 firefighters from over 25 different units tried to control the situation, but the blaze lasted for around five hours, causing significant damage. A HazMat team had to be dispatched to contain the toxic smoke from burning batteries. The fire not only impacted the services but also closed down the 110 and 91 freeway routes, and residents were advised to remain indoors until the situation was under control.
The fallout from the fire was immediately evident as thousands of AT&T users in Redondo Beach, Carson, and Gardena reported that they experienced either slow coverage or complete outages in services. While the 911 systems were also impacted, they were able to come back into operation within an hour. AT&T has confirmed that no staff members were injured and that its Network Disaster Recovery Team was on-site to provide any aid required. The carrier further assured customers that calls made from mobile phones for emergencies would be able to connect, irrespective of the situation.
While the cause of the outage was not related to AT&T and was simply an unfortunate situation, it does serve as a reminder for service providers to reassess their network resilience during such testing situations and prepare for the worst-case scenarios.
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