Hurricane Sandy has knocked several prominent Web sites offline in both Canada and the United States offline.
Gawker, a U.S. news and gossip site, reported that its data centre in New York City had been hit and are currently running on a backup system. Meanwhile, the Huffinton Post also reported storm-related damage that affecting its online operations. Both companies’ are clients of Datagram Inc., an Internet and managed service provider.
Also affected was a Canadian company with a data centre in the U.S., the Emphasys Group, a Calgary-based firm that does software consulting. Lee Ackerman, its CTO and vice-president of operations, said in a Twitter message that the company’s data centre had been flooded and that its Web site would be taken down. The company’s telephone system was apparently out of commission as well, with calls to the Emphasys Group’s toll-free number returning an error message.
In an e-mail message, Ackerman wrote that there were many people “dealing with more serious issues than some Web servers.” The hurricane was “a bump in the road for us,” he added, but “our thoughts are with those dealing with real problems.”
There are estimates that Hurricane Sandy could cause up to $20 billion in damage. Dozens of people have lost their lives during the storm, including one person in Toronto who was killed by a falling store sign.