Data center fires don’t just threaten digital infrastructure. They can claim lives and put businesses at risk. Although data center fires are rare, they can and do happen. There are nearly 8,000 data centers worldwide, but what if a fire struck a facility that you built, maintained, or operated? Two recent examples demonstrate the potential consequences.
Last fall, a lithium-ion battery started a fire in an electrical control room in South Korea. The conflagration eventually disrupted the operations of a data center that provides essential services to many businesses. Today, those businesses are considering a lawsuit for financial damages caused by the outage. There’s also the tragic case of how electrical arcing near an Iowa data center caused a fire that killed electricians.