A fireplace broke out Thursday morning at a knowledge middle in Hillsboro, Oregon leased by Elon Musk’s X, forcing an prolonged response from emergency crews, based on a number of sources who spoke to WIRED. The sources required anonymity as they aren’t licensed to talk publicly in regards to the firm.
Firefighters arrived on the Hillsboro Know-how Park, in a suburb west of Portland, at 10:21 am, based on Hillsboro Fireplace and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich. They discovered a room with batteries that have been deemed to be concerned within the fireplace. Pich famous that the fireplace 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 discovered whether or not server operations on the information middle had been affected by the incident.
Earlier than Elon Musk purchased X, the corporate had three information facilities in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if one information middle went down, visitors might be shifted to the opposite two—and break up so no single information middle was overwhelmed.
Round Christmas Eve 2022, Musk shut down X’s information middle 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, based on inner paperwork. Within the Portland space, X seems to lease area from a constructing that has been linked to Digital Realty, one of many world’s largest builders of information facilities. Digital Realty offers various ranges of working assist at its websites, which might have a number of tenants. It’s unclear if X shares this facility with different corporations. 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 may be unstable, 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 guardian firm, xAI, has taken criticism in current months for its speedy growth of energy capability at a brand new information middle in Memphis, which opened final yr. That facility, which Musk named Colossus, was constructed up at a breakneck pace 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 non permanent, a federal allow for air pollution management is not required, which seems to use 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 amenities within the space.
