An explosion in one of Google’s data centers in Omaha, Iowa left three electricians critically injured and caused a worldwide outage of the company’s services, techradar.com reported.
Situated near Lake Manawa State Park, the complex is one of Google’s largest data centers.
On Tuesday, users across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and elsewhere reported issues with Google and the Alphabet-owned engine’s services.
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DownDetector.com, an online platform that provides real-time information about the status of various websites and services, confirmed that the website was “having problems.”
At its peak in the US, more than 40,000 people reported issues with Google.
“We’re aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected availability of Google Search and Maps, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” Google said in a statement.
“We worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online.”
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Google was trending on Twitter briefly, with many users using the hashtag #GoogleDown.
However, reports from techradar and omaha.com say that one of Google’s biggest data centers experienced an electrical explosion.
A tweet by Council Buffs Scanner said that there was a large electrical explosion but no fire. E41, M3 Extra squad M6 responded to the situation and multiple people were injured with several burn patients.
“One has a lower torso injury. An other has burns to face left arm and thigh,” the tweet read.
The first responders were dispatched to the data center at 11:59 AM to a report of an electrical event on the property, as per Jim Wood, the assistant chief for the Council Bluffs Fire Department.
“It was definitely some sort of electrical issue,” he said.
All three victims were taken to the Nebraska Medical Center. Two were taken by ambulance, while one person with critical injuries was taken by helicopter, Wood confirmed.