The “Central Ramses” fire, in central Cairo, which broke out on Monday evening, and continued until Tuesday morning, caused severe losses at several levels, related to communications, internet and banking services, as well as 4 deaths and dozens of injured.
The fire, which preliminary investigations indicated its outbreak due to “short circuit”, led to the death of 4 employees in Central during the performance of their work, according to an official statement from the “Telecom Egypt Company”. According to the statement of the Ministry of Health, the number of people injured in the fire amounted to 27 injured people who were transferred to nearby hospitals.
Immediately after the fire caused a malfunction that hit the communication and internet services in Cairo and other governorates close, he reached his climax by cutting off the Internet services completely from mobile phones for some time before they were partially recovered, while some communications between networks remained unavailable until Tuesday noon.
The fire caused the disruption of emergency communication services with heat cutting on the ground telephones within the scope of several neighborhoods in central Cairo, while the Ministry of Health announced alternative numbers to communicate with ambulances in the governorates with the inability to contact rescue and emergency authorities.
The disruption of the Internet services led to the cessation of electronic payments services completely, and the inability to access any financial transactions, whether through banking applications or financial transactions applications, while those who frequented banks (Tuesday) faced problems in the inability to withdraw money from their accounts in some branches.
The central bank temporarily decided to raise the maximum daily limit for cash withdrawals from bank branches in the local currency to 500 thousand pounds for individuals and companies instead of 250 thousand pounds in light of the exceptional circumstances resulting from the interruption of Internet services.
The Egyptian Stock Exchange decided to suspend trading (Tuesday) against the background of its services being affected by the interruption of the Internet, and stressed in a statement that the decision to suspend the dealing came to ensure equal opportunities between the dealers.
The fire caused confusion in the operating movement at Cairo International Airport against the background of holidays in the networks of communications and the Internet, which led to the delay of 33 flights that were supposed to take off during the early hours that followed the fire, as it was re -scheduled again, according to an official statement of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (Tuesday).
A large number of citizens complained about the depletion of the “cash” money that were in their possession with the requirement of any place they wanted to deal with, to obtain money in cash, whether it is restaurants or stations that are supplied with fuel, at a time when the system for shipping electricity meters stopped, and the provision of services was affected by a number of government agencies related to the Internet in Egypt.
Although the Egyptian company for the media production city announced that it was not affected by the fire and the problem of the Internet, the majority of the working channels were unable to live on the background of the fire, in addition to the presence of difficult communication difficulties that affected the television broadcasting, but did not cause it.
The Minister of Communications, Amr Talaat, who cut a visit he was making to Jennif, pledged to participate in one of the international events to completely restore service within 24 hours since the dawn of Tuesday, but engineers spoke to media outlets who excluded the matter during the deadline set by the minister for technical difficulties.
Talaat said, after the fire site inspected in press statements that all services were transferred to more than one Central to work as an alternative network, noting that the Central Ramses will remain out of service for days before returning gradually.
The Central Ramses is the pivotal knot of the fixed phone network in Egypt, linking the Greater Cairo Network and the various regions networks, and passes approximately 40 percent of the local and international communication movement, whether through the traditional landlines or through the modern infrastructure of optical fiber networks, which makes it the backbone of communications in the country.
It also represents a major center in the system of digital transfers and international departments, because it contains a large number of digital divisions that are used to transfer calls and link them to international networks, according to the Egyptian cabinet data.
