The Nashville operation of SunGard Data Sytems, which handles e-commerce and data storage for customers, was ordered to shut down its back-up generator Sunday by the Nashville Fire Department, causing its customers to be idle for less than one hour.

At roughly 12:45 p.m. Sunday, a wire in an underground cable connection caused a fire in a vault that houses a Nashville Electric Service transformer, causing a power outage at the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce building at 211 Commerce Street, according to Nashville ElectricService and the building manager, The Mathews Co.

“Our systems worked as they were designed,” Beth Harte, spokeswoman withSunGard told NashvillePost.com Monday. “Our back-up generator took over and did not affect our customers. When the fire department came in they ordered us to shut down our back-up systems. They did not want any of the firefighters injured in trying to put out the fire.”

That idled SunGard’s customers’ web presence for less than an hour. There is no back-up system provisioned for those kinds of situations, which have a very slim chance of occurring, Harte said.

A Nashville Fire Department spokesman said the reason why the fire department might have shut down the back-up generator was “a small amount of smoke inside the building.” However, NES spokesperson Betty Turner said that to her knowledge, the smoke was in an underground vault that houses the faulty transformer.

A spokeswoman for the Mathews Co., which manages the building owned by Commerce Associates, said the property remained without power until after3:30 pm on Sunday. “It didn’t cease working; we cut power to the emergency generator at the request of the fire department.”