Newshot Microsoft outage affects German hotel: automatic warning email not delivered, pool chlorine exceeds limit and 15 people seek medical treatment
IT之家 November 15 news, according to West German Broadcasting (WDR), an incident involving excessive chlorine concentration in a pool occurred at Phantasialand in Brühl near Cologne, Germany. Because the incident happened during a large-scale Microsoft service outage, the automatic warning email that the hotel should have received was not successfully delivered, so staff failed to discover the pool disinfection system anomaly in time, causing 15 people to be injured.
IT之家 learned from the notice that the incident occurred at Hotel Ling Bao inside Phantasialand. According to notices from the fire department and police, the pool's automatic dosing system malfunctioned and injected excessive chlorine into the pool water, causing the chlorine concentration in the water to clearly exceed the safe range. Multiple hotel guests felt unwell after using the pool, with symptoms including respiratory irritation. In the initial stage of the incident, relevant departments reported that 13 people were affected, and the number later increased to 15.
Under normal operating mechanisms, hotel staff should have received automatic anomaly alerts sent by the system. The hotel's safety and maintenance system usually notifies staff by email when equipment operates abnormally, but Phantasialand told WDR that because Microsoft had previously experienced a large-scale service outage, these warning emails were not successfully delivered, so staff did not learn in time about the abnormal chlorine concentration in the pool.
After the incident, the hotel temporarily closed the pool involved and completely replaced the pool water to eliminate the safety hazard caused by excessive chlorine. The fire department later confirmed that the pool had returned to normal and was reopened to hotel guests.
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