A fireplace broke out Thursday morning at a knowledge heart in Hillsboro, Oregon, leased by Elon Musk’s X, forcing an prolonged response from emergency crews, in accordance with a number of sources who spoke to WIRED. The sources required anonymity as they aren’t approved to talk publicly concerning the firm.
Firefighters arrived on the Hillsboro Know-how Park, in a suburb west of Portland, at 10:21 am, in accordance with Hillsboro Fireplace and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich. They discovered a room with batteries that had been deemed to be concerned within the fireplace. Pich famous that the hearth had not unfold to different elements of the constructing, however mentioned the room in query was heavy with smoke. On the time of writing, the crew was nonetheless on the scene.
X didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from WIRED. It couldn’t be realized whether or not server operations on the information heart had been affected by the incident.
Earlier than Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the corporate had three information facilities in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if one information heart went down, site visitors may very well be shifted to the opposite two—and break up so no single information heart was overwhelmed.
Round Christmas Eve 2022, Musk shut down X’s information heart in Sacramento in an effort to chop prices. The corporate skilled a serious outage within the wake of the shutdown. Over the subsequent six months, the corporate moved greater than 2,573 server racks from the Sacramento facility to information facilities in Portland and Atlanta, in accordance with inner paperwork. Within the Portland space, X seems to lease house from a constructing that has been linked to Digital Realty, one of many world’s largest builders of knowledge facilities. Digital Realty gives various ranges of working assist at its websites, which may have a number of tenants. It’s unclear if X shares this facility with different firms. Digital Realty didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Batteries typically perform as a backup energy supply at information facilities. However lithium-ion varieties could be risky, and points with maintenance and insufficient security measures have contributed to pricey blazes at information facilities world wide. Pich, the Hillsboro fireplace division spokesperson, says he couldn’t recall any earlier fireplace involving batteries within the Oregon area’s many different information facilities.
X’s father or mother firm, xAI, has taken criticism in current months for its fast growth of energy capability at a brand new information heart in Memphis, which opened final yr. That facility, which Musk named Colossus, was constructed up at a breakneck velocity to coach xAI’s Grok and different AI instruments. The corporate put in greater than 30 methane-powered fuel generators, however as a result of the generators are short-term, a federal allow for air pollution management is not required, which seems to take advantage of a loophole within the Clear Air Act. The power has drawn widespread criticism from surrounding Black and brown communities, who’re already uncovered to a considerable amount of air air pollution and industrial emissions from different services within the space.
