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Major UK Comms Backbone Bunker Burned Out
evilandi writes "The BBC are reporting that much of Manchester, England is without telephone service following a fire in a major underground tunnel system. The site in question is strongly suspected to be the 'Guardian' nuclear communications bunker system which is one of the main three UK subterranean communications backbone bunkers. The giveaway is this regional BBC news story which mentions Chapel Street, one of the very few entrance/exit points to the 'Guardian' system. If confirmed, Manchester could be without wired communications for some time. The MANAP Manchester Network Access Point regional Internet hub is officially reporting nothing, but a number of UK admins are seeing significant disruption."
It's interesting, and not surprising, to see a Duncan Campbell byline on the research. Duncan became well-known in the mid-90s for doing the journalistic work to publicize the NSA's Echelon wiretapping-the-world system. http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/ has some older articles of his.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We've got patchy and intermittant ISDN connectivity to our Manchester office, but we're not expecting anything close to even a normal backup service for days. We've shunted work out to other regional offices to cover.
OK, it's bad, but worse things have happened. Remember when the IRA blew Manchester city centre up? No lives have been lost and everything will be back to normal soon. ish.
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This tunnel was described on our regional BBC tv news as a 'secret conduit between Manchester and Salford built during the cold war to safeguard communications'. I quote roughly. They also mentioned that it was 40 metres down.
All this was accompanied by some very Dr Strangelove images of corrugated tunnels and antiquated switchgear, a smooth man from British Telecom (who seemed very calm for someone whose secret underground nuclear bunker was on fire) and the sad beeping of disconnected call centre workers trying to close deals with each other.
BT and vodaphone are down, Sporadic towns as far out as chapel-en-le-frith are out, internet is out, 50 firemen were in the tunnel at one point, and I think a 6kv line was involved. Fortunately my Aunt lives far enough out to still have a phone :D
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
This morning I got I text message from my boss about the problem and left for work after seeing that my own home ADSL connection was ok. I arrived at work to find that we had no phones (other than mobiles) and the our leased line was dead. We got phones back around 1pm but the leased line was still AWOL when I left work at around 6pm.
I visited the site of the fire (well, the ground above the site!) at lunch time, and the streets were still full of fire engines and other emergency services.
I'm told by our ISP that they are unsure of the extent of the damage but hope to get things back by tomorrow. I left a cronjob running that should mail me here every hour and so far I've heard nothing from it, so I suspect tomorrow will be spent getting colocated facilities activated.
EMERGENCY services, homes and businesses were hit after an underground fire in Manchester city centre cut 130,000 phone lines.
The blaze, in a tunnel by the junction of George Street and Princess Street, destroyed cables connected to the national phone network.
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