Cool Farm Tool – Incident Report - Executive Summary 

On 24 February 2026, the Cool Farm Tool (CFT experienced a complete outage affecting the web application and API. The incident lasted 7 hours and 24 minutes (16:49 on 23 February to 16:13 on 24 February GMT). All users were unable to access the platform during this period. 

Impact 

1. Full service outage for all web and API users. 
   
2. Multiple user reports received and acknowledged. 
   
3. No data loss, corruption, or security breach occurred. 
   

Root Cause 
The outage was caused by the accidental deletion of a critical internet gateway route from the production AWS public route table. This route enables inbound and outbound internet connectivity for the platform. Its removal isolated the application from the internet and made the service unavailable. 

Contributing Factors 

1. Human error during infrastructure configuration. 
   
2. Excessive production access permissions for non-production work. 
   
3. Insufficient clarity between production and non-production environments. 
   
4. Coincidental timing with a routine infrastructure deployment delayed diagnosis. 
   

Resolution 
Service was restored by reinstating the deleted route and validating network connectivity. Full service was confirmed at 16:13 GMT on 24 February 2026. 

Learnings and Future Preventative Actions 

1. Enforce least-privilege, time-bound access to production systems. 
   
2. Improve environment separation and labelling. 
   
3. Implement monitoring and safeguards for critical network changes. 
   
4. Strengthen post-recovery validation procedures.