Fire Breaks Out at a Data Center Leased by Elon Musk’s X | EUROtoday

A hearth broke out Thursday morning at an information heart 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 Technology Park, in a suburb west of Portland, at 10:21 am, based on Hillsboro Fire 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 hearth had not unfold to different elements of the constructing, however stated the room in query was heavy with smoke. At 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 knowledge heart had been affected by the incident.

Before Elon Musk purchased X, the corporate had three knowledge facilities in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if one knowledge heart went down, visitors might be shifted to the opposite two—and break up so no single knowledge heart was overwhelmed.

Around Christmas Eve 2022, Musk shut down X’s knowledge heart in Sacramento in an effort to chop prices. The firm 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 knowledge facilities in Portland and Atlanta, based on inner paperwork. In 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 knowledge facilities. Digital Realty supplies 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 operate as a backup energy supply at knowledge facilities. But lithium-ion varieties could be unstable, and points with repairs and insufficient security measures have contributed to pricey blazes at knowledge facilities around the globe. Pich, the Hillsboro fireplace division spokesperson, says he couldn’t recall any earlier fireplace involving batteries within the Oregon area’s many different knowledge facilities.

X’s mother or father firm, xAI, has taken criticism in latest months for its fast growth of energy capability at a brand new knowledge heart in Memphis, which opened final 12 months. That facility, which Musk named Colossus, was constructed up at a breakneck velocity to coach xAI’s Grok and different AI instruments. The firm 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 Clean Air Act. The facility 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.