Delhi Data Centre Fire Triggers Google Cloud Service Disruptions Across India

A fire at a third-party data centre facility in New Delhi on June 9 caused significant disruptions to Google Cloud services across multiple regions in India, impacting enterprises, businesses, and digital services dependent on Google's cloud infrastructure. The incident led to network congestion, increased latency, packet loss, and intermittent connectivity issues affecting customers in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and other major cities.

According to Google Cloud, the fire necessitated an emergency shutdown of networking equipment housed within the facility. The outage affected Google's local Point of Presence (PoP) in Delhi, reducing available network capacity and disrupting normal traffic flow. As a result, Google initiated emergency traffic rerouting measures to maintain service continuity. However, the sudden shift of workloads to alternate routes created additional network strain, leading to performance degradation across several regions.

Google Cloud, one of the world's leading hyperscale cloud providers alongside Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, acknowledged the incident through its service health dashboard and continued to monitor recovery efforts throughout the day.

Industry sources have linked the fire to Tata Communications' Next-Gen Tower data centre facility in Greater Kailash (GK-1), New Delhi, where reports suggest a battery room on the third floor caught fire. However, neither Google Cloud nor Tata Communications has officially confirmed the identity of the facility involved in the incident.

The Delhi Fire Services reported that the blaze occurred in a battery room spanning approximately 200 square feet within a multi-storey office complex opposite Savitri Cinema. Firefighters successfully contained the fire by around 7:00 AM. Two firefighters sustained burn injuries during the operation and were treated at Safdarjung Hospital. No civilian injuries or fatalities were reported.

While services have largely stabilized, Google Cloud has not disclosed the full extent of the operational impact or the timeline for complete restoration. The incident highlights the growing importance of resilient data centre infrastructure and redundancy planning as India's dependence on cloud services continues to expand across industries.