SLOW INTERNET SERVICE - Caused by Baltimore tunnel fire

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Thursday July 19 6:59 PM ET

Tunnel Fire Slows Internet Service

By STEPHEN MANNING, AP Business Writer

LANHAM, Md. (AP) - Derailed train cars burning in a Baltimore tunnel seriously damaged nearby fiber-optic cables, slowing Internet service and other communications traffic across the country.

The fire caused major Internet slowdowns in the mid-Atlantic states, with the ripple effect carrying nationwide. Keynote Systems, a company measuring the performances of Web sites, said the delay experienced by Internet users was the worst it has ever seen.

Fiber-optic cable for voice and data run through the tunnel and were damaged by the blaze and smoke that forced authorities to close downtown Baltimore on Wednesday night.

Telecommunications companies WorldCom, PSINet, and AboveNet all reported problems with service, but they had not yet measured the extent of the damage to cables or the number of customers affected.

The fire continued to burn Thursday, preventing WorldCom technicians from repairing damaged cable, company spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said.

Crews worked overnight to reroute traffic to other cables and restored service to most customers by Thursday afternoon, Baker said.

``For nearly three hours today we were totally cut off, our Web page was down and we had no e-mail,'' said Dan Johnson, president of DWJ Television in Ridgewood, N.J.

The film production company had some service restored by mid-afternoon, but its Web site still was offline.

Telephone service to western Maryland also was affected by the train wreck. A call center in Cumberland that handles campground reservations for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was knocked off line.

A Citicorp customer service center in Hagerstown lost two-thirds of its lines, said Phil Kelly, a company spokesman.

AboveNet sent an e-mail message to customers telling them to expect delays while they rerouted data to other cables. A PSINet spokeswoman also said service would be affected by the fire.

Keynote spokeswoman Mary Lindsay said the cable cuts affected service throughout the country.

``What we're seeing is a problem in the handshake between the backbones which serve as the Internet's infrastructure,'' she said. ``These backbone providers hand off traffic to travel between them across the country.''

The backbone networks provide a skeleton for the Internet, carrying messages between major cities and across oceans. Keystone monitors recorded major delays handing off traffic from one backbone carrier to another.

Keynote reported huge slowdowns in Seattle and Los Angeles that also may be attributed to the train wreck.

The fact that a single fire could cause such an Internet blip shows just how connected the global network is. When an Internet provider has problems ``peering'' - or handing off traffic to other Internet providers like passing a note down a chain - people all over the world can feel its effects.

``It's more of a living thing,'' Keynote's Eric Siegel said of the Internet. ``It's controlled by a couple of dozen guys in each major Internet provider. There's no central control. If one of them does something, its effects propagate outwards.''

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Answers

I wonder whether Code Red was scheduled to piggyback on an event like this. Our Washington office is still being impacted by the Baltimore derailing.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/201/nation/Crews_draining_hazardous_ch emi:.shtml

Crews draining hazardous chemicals from derailed train burning in Baltimore tunnel

By Paul Owens, Associated Press, 7/20/2001 07:42

BALTIMORE (AP) Emergency crews used hoses fed through manholes to pump hydrochloric acid from a leaking tanker car early Friday as they continued to cope with a train derailment that ignited a raging fire and left the city paralyzed.

Firefighters said most cars from the train appear to be connected and on the track, and they hoped to pull them out with a locomotive after getting at the fire that had burned for more than 36 hours.

The firefighters began attacking the fire early Friday after they removed several cars that were blocking them. Fifty-four cars from the 60-car freight train remained in the tunnel.

''It looks like the train is intact from 45 to one,'' fire department spokesman Hector Torres said. ''They'll fight the fire from 46 back... We're actually making very good progress inside the tunnel.''

The fire also damaged fiber optic cables, slowing Internet service across the country, and forced the Baltimore Orioles to postpone games at nearby Camden Yards. Immediately after the derailment, police shut down major highways into the city for several hours for fear dangerous chemicals on the train could catch fire.

The train was carrying wood, paper and hazardous materials, including hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid, which can burn the lungs if inhaled. Officials said air quality tests Wednesday and Thursday registered mostly steam and hydrocarbons, likely from burning wood.

''So far, knock on wood, there's nothing being emitted into the air that would pose a threat to public health,'' Mayor Martin O'Malley said.

Robert Gould, a spokesman for CSX Transportation Inc., which owns the train and tunnel, said efforts to get the fire under control and remove rail cars seemed to be working.

''We're optimistic we're going to make some significant progress tonight,'' Gould said.

The leaking tanker had lost about a quarter of its 20,000-gallon load of hydrochloric acid, officials with the Maryland Department of the Environment said. Spokesman John Verrico said the limestone base in the tunnel would help to neutralize some of the acid.

Feeding a hose through a manhole, firefighters doused the tanker car to cool it before CSX workers began vacuuming out the acid into trucks on the street 50 feet above. Fire trucks sprayed a steady stream water over the area to control vapors.

Air quality monitoring in the area revealed nothing unusual in the early hours of the operation, Verrico said.

The goal was to empty the tankers so they could be moved out of the tunnel, making it easier and safer for firefighters to reach the train cars still burning. Over the course of the day, five charred boxcars and a tanker carrying resin for making plastic were removed from the 106-year-old tunnel that stretches north from Camden Yards.

''The difficulty is not so much fighting the fire but getting to it,'' said Carl McDonald, acting chief of the Baltimore City Fire Department.

A National Transportation Safety Board team was investigating the derailment. Gov. Parris Glendening toured the scene Thursday and pledged to help ''bring everything back to normal.''

The fire caused major Internet slowdowns in the mid-Atlantic states, and delays rippled across the country as companies diverted Web traffic to other lines. Authorities weren't yet able to assessed the extent of the damage.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


I was wondering....!

Yesterday I was having a terrible time getting anywhere on line.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


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