UPDATE (12 Sept, 10.37pm): In its second and final update, SCDF said the damping-down operations at 3 Loyang Way had been completed, close to three days after the fire was first reported.
The site was fully handed over to the owner of the premises at about 10.30pm on Thursday (12 Sept). “A Company Emergency Response Team (CERT) has been engaged by the premises owner to stand by on-site while recovery operations are ongoing,” SCDF added.
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UPDATE (11 Sept, 7.04pm): A joint statement from the SCDF and Building and Construction Authority (BCA) said a small team of firefighting crew remains at the data centre in Loyang, more than 1.5 days after the fire was first reported. It stayed there to monitor the situation and support the damping-down operation at the affected battery rooms while recovery operations by the owner of the premises were ongoing.
SCDF’s preliminary investigation findings indicate that the fire is likely to be of electrical origin from one of the two battery rooms affected. The fire also affected two power supply rooms and an equipment storage room on the mezzanine floor of level 3.
BCA’s preliminary findings indicate some structural damage, though the building’s structural integrity is not affected. Nevertheless, it will issue a Dangerous Building Order (DBO) and Closure Order (CO) for some areas on levels 3, 3M, and 4 as a precautionary measure. The building owner is required to appoint a Professional Engineer to conduct a full assessment of the structures once debris is cleared.
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On Tuesday (10 Sept), the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) responded to a total of three separate fires across Singapore.
They took place in Tampines, Bukit Merah and Loyang, and resulted in a total of eight people being sent to hospital.
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
In response to queries from MS News, SCDF said it was first alerted at about 8am to a fire at 3 Loyang Way.
The address corresponds to SIN11 Digital Loyang 1, a data centre operated by international real estate firm Digital Realty.
Source: 8world News on Facebook
The fire involved lithium-ion batteries housed in battery rooms on the third floor of the four-storey building.
About 20 people had self-evacuated from the building before SCDF’s arrival.
An explosion was reportedly heard before the incident, followed by smoke billowing out of the building, 8world News understands.
Reporters from the news outlet saw 14 employees in black uniforms and detected a choking scorched smell.
SCDF fire trucks and officers, as well as the police, were also at the scene.
Source: 8world News on Facebook
Less than an hour after the first alert, SCDF was alerted at about 8.55am to another fire, this time at Block 885 Tampines Street 83.
A video sent to citizen journalism website STOMP showed smoke coming from a window of the block and SCDF vehicles at the scene.
SCDF told MS News that it responded to a fire at a flat on the ninth floor which involved a section of the living room.
It was extinguished using a water jet.
One person had self-evacuated from the flat before SCDF’s arrival while it rescued another person from the kitchen.
Both of them were assessed by a paramedic for smoke inhalation and burn injuries.
They were conveyed to the Singapore General Hospital (SGH).
The cause of the fire is under investigation, SCDF added.
At 11.20am, SCDF was alerted to a third fire within the same day.
In a Facebook post, it said this fire occurred at Block 104 Jalan Bukit Merah, again in a ninth-floor unit.
The fire, which involved its bedroom, was extinguished using a water jet but not without the rest of the unit sustaining heat and smoke damage.
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
While two people had self-evacuated from the flat before SCDF arrived, about 35 other residents were evacuated as a precaution.
They lived on the ninth to 11th floors.
Six people, who lived in neighbouring units, were assessed by paramedics for smoke inhalation and conveyed to SGH.
Source: Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook
The cause of the fire is under investigation, though SCDF said it is likely to have started in the bedroom.
Though the fires in Tampines and Bukit Merah were apparently resolved quickly, the Loyang fire operations are taking longer.
8world News observed that at 8.10pm — more than 12 hours after the fire was reported — SCDF personnel were still seen entering the building wearing protective gear.
Source: 8world News on Facebook
Smoke was also continuing to emanate from the premises.
SCDF told MS News that it had deployed four water jets to contain the fire, and the building’s sprinkler system was also activated.
SCDF also said an unmanned firefighting robot had been deployed to cool the batteries involved as part of the damping-down operation, adding:
This will likely be a prolonged operation.
No injuries have been reported from the Loyang fire.
The fire in the data centre has already caused some issues with the cloud services of tech company Alibaba.
In a status update at 10.20am on 10 Sept, Alibaba said it detected “network access anomalies” in availability zone C of the Singapore region. This had caused some cloud services to “function abnormally”.
In a subsequent update, it said the issue had occurred due to a fire incident in the Singapore data centre.
By 2.40pm, the fire situation had been “basically brought under control”, but temperatures in the facility remained high.
An update at 8.04pm said operation and maintenance engineers were unable to enter the data centre due to fire safety control.
Some network equipment in the centre had already experienced “abnormalities” due to the high-temperature environment, affecting the network connectivity of some cloud products, it said, adding:
The risk of continuously rising temperature in the data centre cannot be eliminated for the time being… If the subsequent temperature rise is not effectively controlled, the possibility of a complete network outage in Availability Zone C of Singapore will increase.
W.media reported that services hosted by other tech companies such as Lazada and Bytedance were also affected.
Digital Realty, which owns three data centres in Singapore, was quoted by Data Center Dynamics as saying in a statement that a fire alarm was triggered at its SIN11 data centre at 7.45am.
Source: Lianhe Zaobao on Facebook
All its on-site personnel were safely evacuated by 8.15am.
SCDF is working to secure the premises and stabilise the situation, it added.
Also read: 3 individuals taken to hospital after industrial fires in Eunos & Defu Lane
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Featured image adapted from Singapore Civil Defence Force on Facebook and Lianhe Zaobao on Facebook.
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