Pan-African company, ST Digital, drills staff on safety, risk management.

The session as held June 10. It was in collaboration with the 20th firefighting brigade of Douala.

The exercise was aimed at testing the teams' responsiveness to an emergency situation and in extension, validate the effectiveness of internal security measures. 

Going by Director of Cloud and Data center Services at ST Digital, Jean Francis Ahanda, "fire safety is one of the primary risks for a data center, so training team members is of crucial importance”.

By investing in automatic fire extinguishing systems and ongoing staff training, ST Digital officials are said to have taken a step further in reinforcing its commitment of a 100% reliable, and secure cloud.

The company has made data and personnel security a strategic pillar in a constantly evolving digital environment. 

“It’s quite expensive, but that’s not what matters. The goal is to guarantee high availability of services to our customers,” Ahanda added.

To achieve the safety goal, a fire outbreak scenario was simulated in a strategic area of ​​the data center.

Once the alarm was triggered, internal teams were urgently mobilised, followed by the intervention of firefighters who arrived 15 minutes after the alarm sounded automatically. 

The firefighters began locating the fire in the control room to analyse what caused the simulated incident. Procedures were detailed to clarify everyone's roles during an alert. 

"To get to the assembly point, you must follow the tail-ender who came to evacuate you, then the tail-leader in charge of leading you," Pierre Sebastian Songwa Tchinda, Infrastructure Lead at the Datacenter, explained 

Fire experts have made several recommendations to ST Digital, including continuing regular internal training, strengthening safety briefings for new employees, and maintaining active collaboration with the fire service to update response procedures.

Lieutenant Gnoundji Wilfried of the 20th Firefighting Brigade said, in case fire breaks out in a data center, immediate actions include alerting personnel, calling emergency services, shutting down power and evacuating the affected area.

Data centers also rely on specialised fire suppression systems, like clean agent systems or water mist systems, to minimise damage. He has praised the personnel's discipline in learning safety measures. 

"I didn't see people panicking or running; that's to be commended. You should never try to save a machine: the priority is you," he said.

On their part, the staff gave unanimous positive feedback after the session. According to the workers, the exercise helped them better understand the right reflexes to adopt. 

One of them, Rolande Kana, noted that: "I understood the importance of staying at the assembly point until the end; it's crucial to ensure everyone is out". 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3477 of Wednesday June 18, 2025