A serious fire in a US-based data centre this weekend has caused severe disruption to an estimated 700,000 websites, including those of some UK clients.

A faulty transformer has been identified as the cause of the fire, which took place at the Houston, Texas, data centre facility of web hosting company The Planet. The fire triggered an explosion, causing extensive damage to the power infrastructure of the data centre.

“Damage to our H1 data centre is worse than initially expected,” said The Planet’s CEO, Douglas Erwin. “Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed.”

Fire authorities advised the company not to invoke its disaster recovery plan, which involved powering up a secondary generator, because the risk of further electrical fire was too great.

Although the company says that no customer data has been lost, full service has still not been returned after three days.

Further reading

When the sky falls Forced out of its offices by a collapsing building, Watson Wyatt saw its business continuity investments prove their worth

Staying afloat The widespread flooding that hit the UK this summer proved a severe test for many businesses’ disaster recovery measures

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