Techies evac'd as raging wildfire menaces $100m Colorado data centre A massive HP data centre in Colorado Springs is in danger of being destroyed by a wildfire raging near by. The data centre, located alongside a HP laboratory and office on Rockrimmon Boulevard in Colorado Springs, is in the mandatory evacuation area (PDF) for the fire, although the fire hasn't reached that street yet. "The …
This will make a great film.
Man starts wildfire
Data Centre evacuated
Man goes into data centre to steal
Employee fights man to death
Employee steals data goes to live in Mexico in the hope of finding Mr Big
Man extradited to USA and put to death
Why? ' you shouldnt have been a data sharer son' as they stick a needle in his arm.
Three weeks later they find he was innocent
when they build datacentres don't they pay people to look around for obvious hazards before they start construction?
Don't they check for earthquakes, volcanoes, ice storms, tornadoes, floods, insect plagues (ants in your vents isn't funny, nor are rodents munching cables) and somewhere on the list will be wildfires (the clue is, there's a lot of shrubbery outside).
Years ago, we had a nice man come from Lloyds' Insurance to tell us there was more risk of a car bomb wrecking the bottom floors of our tower block (early '90's London) than there was of a helicopter crashing in to the top (this was on to the approach to Battersea Heliport), so would we please move our servers from the ground floor to the top floor.
How hard can it be?
The funny thing for this is that all 3 cities (Boulder, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs) have been threatened by fires. Boulder HP and Fort Collins HP happen to be on the far side of the cities from the fires.
This was a boundary condition. Most years, there would not have been much of a threat in the Springs. Even here, they are evacuating more for air quality then a threat to the physical facility.
Pretty much any area has a chance of some type of natural disaster or terrorist / other risk and you have to balance those risk with the cost to build, ability to get (cheap) power, connectivity and staff to work there etc. A lot of the UK data centres are basically ex-office buildings not necessarily ideally located or as 'perfect' as they could be.
looking at the aerial images, I'd say the building is reasonably well protected from forest fire, even if the fire came right up to the nearby houses. It looks like the designers have placed a fairly wide scrub type firebreak between the building and any inflammable materials (houses, trees etc). I'd say the building control folk would have demanded a wide firebreak all around the building and that seems to be the case.
Then also the surrounding areas are not heavily wooded, but more like low scrub bushes.
No danger here.
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
