Slashdot Mirror
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."
I wonder how british Amatuer Radio is doing.
About ten years ago we had a fire in an electrical cage under the computer room. Large stacks of cable had been laying about in the cage, where some brilliant person decided to pile several boxes of paper, too. Sparks from construction work smoldered in the paper and, despite the cable insullation being fire resistant, with enough heat it burns like petrol. Black soot settled everywhere, as smoke went into the ventillation system and all but one workstation were out (somehow the powermains and one line failed to short out) We were in during the weekend and laid enough cable to bring up basic services by the following Monday, but inhaled unknown quantities of asbestos and compounds released from the burnt plastic and rubber.
In the end the failure of fire alarms was blamed on the fire, too, but the firemarshall found the wires for it (which are supposed to survive fire) had been disconnected for years.
It'll be interesting to see how this all came about.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Cold-War History in Manchester
Posting anonymously to avoid karma whoring. No troll text, I promise!
- - - - -
Cold-War History in Manchester
The Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange
Ever since I moved to Manchester in 1986 I've heard rumours about secret underground installations under the city centre. I particularly remember being told on several occasions about a secret nuclear bunker under Piccadilly Gardens. I have since found out that there is some truth behind these rumours. This web site reports my findings.
Warning
The Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange is NOT open to the public. Attempting to gain unauthorised access is trespass. Often it is very dangerous too: on more than one occasion people have died in the process of trying to gain access to such sites.
If you attempt to enter a defence related site, even an apparently unused one, you should expect an unpleasant encounter with military police.
Please do not pester site owners to gain access, this causes irritation to many of them.
Instead, please join one of the specialist societies that can organise visits properly.
Most of what I found out came from the excellent and highly recommended book:
War Plan UK: The Secret Truth about Britain's "Civil Defence"
by [http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/]Duncan Campbell
Published by Paladin Books in 1983
(Unfortunately it is now out of print)
This book includes a map and description of the Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange and deep level tunnel system in Manchester. Duncan Campbell has kindly given me permission to reproduce this information here:
I have had to remove the map at the request of the Geographers' A-Z Map Co Ltd.
Manchester Guardian is an underground telephone exchange in the centre of Manchester built in 1954. It is 112 feet (34m) below ground and cost 4 million to construct. The main tunnel, one thousand feet long and twenty-five feet wide (300m by 7m), lies below buildings in Back George Street, linking up to an anonymous and unmarked surface building containing the entrance lifts and ventilator shafts. There are also access shafts in the Rutherford telephone exchange in George Street.
Its purpose was to resist a Hiroshima sized twenty-kiloton atom bomb, and preserve essential communications links even if the centre of Manchester had been flattened.
A deep level tunnel system runs east and west from Guardian. A mile-long (1.3km) tunnel runs west to Salford, and a thousand-yard (700m) tunnel runs to Lockton Close in Ardwick, where a modernised ventilator building marks the south-eastern extension of the Manchester deep level tunnels.
In the event of an attack warning, Guardian's main entry shaft was to have been sealed by a thirty-five-ton concrete slab that could be positioned over the entrance. Staff could escape either by using built-in hydraulic jacks to lift the slab (if covered with debris) some weeks after attack, or via the deep level tunnels to Ardwick and Salford. Emergency stores contained six weeks' supply of food rations, and Guardian had its own artesian well, generators, fuel tanks, and artificial windows and scenery painted onto rest-room walls.
The exchange was to survive even if the city it served was destroyed.
The Manchester Guardian telephone exchange and deep level tunnels were one of several such systems built in the 50s. Similar installations can be found under London (Kingsway) and [http://www.birminghamanchor.co.uk/]Birmingham (Anchor).
By the time the exchange and tunnels were complete they were entirely vulnerable to more powerful Soviet H-bombs.
I decided to try to locate and photograph the shafts and surface buildings described in "War Plan UK". To my surprise I found the surface buildings still intact, although they seemed to be in a bad state of repair. Their existence is still not common knowledge in Manchester.
I wonder how much is left of the underground installations.
Ard
At least, I got a message from worldpay earlier this afternoon that their server were being affected, but I've not noticed anything myself. Most of the UK's internet traffic goes through LInX anyway, which is pretty damn secure, so I'd be surprised to see any real IP issues, even if BT are in a bit of a pickle ...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I was under the impression that many of these tunnels were filled with inert gasses, such as SF6 to prevent this exact sort of problem. I assume its very hard to keep an old tunnel air tight, but I would expect it would be a higher priority to keep at the major backbones air free.. is this practice not as common as I thought?
Posting anonymously to avoid karma whoring. No troll text, I promise!
- - - - -
Cold-War History in Manchester
The Guardian Underground Telephone Exchange
REPLY TO THE SITE FROM BT MANCHESTER
For general info having scanned through your site:
1. The exchange is still used as a secure cable route -avoids digging up the city.
2. It is over 200' deep and is unaffected by foundations etc.
3. All equipment is largely intact except for the telephone exchange elements which were removed to comply with EEC legislation regarding some of their components (about 3 years ago)
4. "was particularly surprised to see the piano and pool table in the recreation room. They were planning to have quite a relaxing time sitting out Armageddon down there!"
Don't forget we had Power Engineers working down there until 1997 -this was their rest room!
5. "The people of Manchester paid a great deal of money for the construction of this bunker, they were given no choice in the matter, it was built without their knowledge and it was obsolete before it was completed, for these reasons I believe we should be given access to it!"
In actual fact I believe that it wasn't paid for by the British Government let alone Manchester - it was largely paid for by NATO which in those days meant America. Since then it has been maintained at the Post Office/BT's expense
BT are unable to open the site to the public for a variety of reasons mainly concerning safety and security.
26 August 1999
If anyone reading this has any more information on the underground installations in Manchester please email me at: atomic!cybertrn.demon.co.uk
Copyright 2000 (C) George Coney
Last updated 24 January 2000
Got an email this afternoon from an online store saying they weren't able to handle any credit card orders at the moment because both their primary and backup link to the Barclays Banking Network was down because of a fire. I assume it's the same fire (sounds like the right area). Do have to wonder why they bother with a backup if it's running through the same facility.
Who is going to pay for it? People say they want redundancy and reliability, but when it comes to making a decision, they go for cheap every time.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
'Guardian' nuclear communications bunker system
If it was built to survive a nuclear war, you would think that it would be resistant to a fire.
OK, the thing was probably built ages ago, so maybe the fire-resistant insulation has worn out or something but you would think a Nuclear Bunker would be pretty durrable.
Was it an electrical fire?
Was the wiring bad or worn out?
Have they rewired it in the last 50 years or so?
Guess they will have to now.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
American readers may be interested to learn that they - or at least their grandparents - paid for the construction of the Guardian telephone exchange under Manchester, and several others. It was a cold war NATO project to protect comms against atom bombs on the city centres. There were similar exchanges under London (Kingsway) and Birmingham (Anchor). They were built in the early 1950s, but are now obsolete. Although the underground exchanges have gone, the cable tunnels that run from these city centre locations to the ourskirts are still very much in use. Details of all of these and many other 'secret' underground structures in the UK can be found on the Subterranea Britannica web site.
Guardian bunker runined, and only 130,000 lines out of service? Or are these trunks not "lines"? (Line has a number attached to it, trunk carries calls).
-psy
At work we manage WANs for a few nationwide (UK that is) customers. Each site has an ADSL connection, with ISDN as backup. Got to work this morning to find that all the Manchester ADSLs were down, but for some reason the ISDNs were still working... any idea why the ISDNs would still be working? I'd expected them all to be down.