A fireplace broke out Thursday morning at an information 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 Expertise Park, in a suburb west of Portland, at 10:21 am, based on Hillsboro Hearth 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 components of the constructing, however stated the room in query was heavy with smoke. As of three:00 pm, 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.
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, the corporate had three information facilities in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if one information middle went down, site visitors could possibly 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 significant outage within the wake of the shutdown. Over the following six months, the corporate moved greater than 2,573 server racks from the Sacramento facility to information facilities in Portland and Atlanta, based on inside 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 information facilities. Digital Realty supplies various ranges of working help at its websites, which may have a number of tenants. It’s unclear if X shares this facility with different firms.
Ryan Younger, vice chairman of Americas operations for Digital Realty, stated in an announcement to WIRED on Thursday night that the “fire-related incident at our PDX11 facility” had been contained and that the fireplace division had left. “All personnel have been safely evacuated, with no reported accidents,” Younger said. “We proceed to watch the state of affairs, prioritizing the protection of our personnel, the integrity of the power, and minimizing buyer influence.”
Younger declined to touch upon clients.
Batteries typically perform as a backup energy supply at information facilities. However lithium-ion varieties will be unstable, and points with maintenance and insufficient security measures have contributed to expensive blazes at information facilities all over the world. Pich, the Hillsboro Hearth Division spokesperson, says he couldn’t recall any earlier fireplace involving batteries within the Oregon area’s many different information facilities.
X’s parent company, xAI, has taken criticism in latest months for its speedy growth of energy capability at a brand new information middle in Memphis, which opened final 12 months. That facility, which Musk named Colossus, was constructed up at 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 use a loophole within the Clear Air Act. The ability 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.
Replace 5/22/25 11:03 ET: This story has been up to date to incorporate further remark from Digital Realty.
