Tunnel Burns, Internet Melts

Baldwin Louie — Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Just in case you haven't heard all the yapping about the global village one too many times, how about this: A train derailment in a tunnel in Baltimore caused everything from cell phone outages in Maryland to e-mail problems in Africa. You'd expect the Luddite crowd to have a field day with this one, but press coverage of Wednesday's crash and the resulting, ongoing, fire was fairly restrained.

The Washington Post said the outages disrupted service from Washington to New York, largely for subscribers to WorldCom's Internet and data services. An Associated Press story picked up by FloridaToday reported that PSINet and AboveNet customers had problems, too.

The best anecdotes, though, came from the Baltimore Sun, which quoted William Glover, technology officer for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which had problems communicating with its church parishes and schools: "They've had to reroute data traffic, so dribs and drabs of e-mails are coming in," Glover said. "It's like a storm drain of data trying to push through a garden hose." As if thwarting the powers of God's e-mail weren't dramatic enough, the Sun also got an e-mail from a former Baltimorean working for the State Department in Zambia, who wrote that "the fire took out MCI phone wiring that runs to a point near the Washington, D.C., area that feeds our link with the State Dept. and our e-mail system." We're sure MCI is grateful for the publicity.

The basic problem here is that fiber-optic cable runs through the tunnel; when the 60-car freight train carrying paper, wood and plenty of hazardous materials derailed and caught fire, the cable was damaged. Since temperatures in the tunnel have reached 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, nobody's venturing in to get things fixed just yet. The bigger problem, however, was fingered by Keynote Systems' Eric Siegel, who said this about the Internet to the AP, "It's more of a living thing. 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." That might be even scarier than a 1,500-degree, toxic fire.

Train derailment severs communications
Baltimore Sun

Train Wreck Derails UUNet Service
Washington Post

Baltimore tunnel fire burns Internet users nationwide
Florida Today (AP)

Crews draining hazardous chemicals from derailed train burning in Baltimore tunnel
San Francisco Chronicle (AP)

Fire's effects ripple onto the Net
CNET.com

Burning cars in rail tunnel resist control
Baltimore Sun

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Tunnel Burns, Internet Melts