CAIRO, July (MENA) - Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli emphasized the need to take the necessary measures to ensure the structural safety of Cairo's Ramses Central Building, in accordance with the technical report to be issued by the Technical Inspection Authority for Construction Works after examining the building.

He also called for swiftly submitting an urgent recovery plan to restore the building's full operational capacity as soon as possible.

This came during the prime minister’s inspection visit Wednesday to the Ramses Central building in downtown Cairo to follow up on the repercussions of the fire that broke out there on Monday.

During the visit, the premier sought to stand on the efforts being made to restore telecommunications services that were affected by the blaze.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat and several senior officials accompanied the premier during the visit.

Upon his arrival at the central building, Madbouli reviewed the current structural safety status of the facility and the status of services in the aftermath of the fire.

The minister of communications presented a blow-by-blow report on the situation.

For his part, Talaat said that the fire started on the seventh floor of the Ramses Central building at around 5:00 PM on Monday.

Civil defense was notified, and despite the presence of self-extinguishing systems and manual intervention attempts, the rapid spread of the fire through the cables led to its extension to adjacent rooms, therefore intensifying the fire which was hard to be contained by the self-extinguishing systems.

He added that civil defense forces arrived at around 5:30 PM, but the fire had already spread to most floors of the building and the customer service halls, partially affecting services both at geographical and sectoral levels.

He said that services were immediately redirected to alternative central offices for the majority of Telecom Egypt’s backbone network, and efforts were conducted to recover services that couldn’t be rerouted through the alternate facilities.

Regarding the status of services, Talaat explained that for landline data services, there was no service outage outside the vicinity of the Ramses Central building, and performance levels have returned to normal.

However, within the vicinity of the central, there was a complete service outage affecting customers, but partial restoration has already occurred, with full service expected to resume within the coming hours today.

As for landline voice services, Talaat noted that outside the central's vicinity, there was no major impact, and full service was restored by 6:00 AM on Tuesday at normal performance levels. Within the central’s vicinity, there was a complete outage that partially recovered, with full restoration expected throughout the day.

Regarding mobile voice services, the minister noted that at the beginning of the crisis, all four mobile operators experienced a decline in service quality outside the central's vicinity. However, service quality has significantly been restored, reaching about 95% of normal levels by this morning. Within the central’s vicinity, the quality was severely affected initially (for Orange, Vodafone, Etisalat, and WE), but alternative solutions restored the service by the end of yesterday. Quality improvements are ongoing and expected to return to normal soon.

Regarding sector-specific services, the minister said that the banking sector was partially affected at the beginning of the crisis (limited to a few banks that lacked backup connectivity). Network maneuvers resolved the issue by 9:00 AM yesterday, except for one bank, whose issues have since been fully resolved and will resume regular operations by the end of the day.

As for the stock exchange, services were confirmed to be restored by the evening of the incident. However, as a precaution, the exchange chose to suspend Tuesday’s session. Upon confirming the stability of brokerage services, the session resumed normally today.

The minister confirmed that food subsidy services have been functioning without interruption since day one.

Service was restored at EgyptAir's affected airport facilities within two hours on the same day of the mishap. Emergency services remained unaffected, but ambulance communication services (number 123) were initially impacted in some governorates for Orange, Vodafone, and Etisalat. Service was restored by 4:00 PM yesterday, and alternative emergency numbers were provided in each governorate to ensure accessibility until full restoration of the service.

Before leaving the site, the premier thanked the civil defense personnel for their efforts in responding to the fire at the central building.

He met with several of them and praised their dedication in extinguishing the blaze. (MENA)
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