Fuel system failure stops generators at New York data centre during Hurricane Sandy
Oct 2012Published 12 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
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What happened
During Hurricane Sandy, Internap's data centre at 111 8th Avenue, New York, suffered an outage on the night before the company published its second-day update, which is dated 30 October 2012 in one record and 31 October 2012 in another. The exact date of the outage is not confirmed by the source. According to the company, a building-fed fuel system malfunctioned, and the fuel pumps could not supply diesel to the rooftop generators.
The generators stopped supplying power to the UPS system. Once battery backup was exhausted, the infrastructure lost power. The outage caused a loss of IP connectivity for several service points until power to the P-NAP was restored. At the time of the update, connectivity had been restored for all customers and power restored to most data centre customers, with work continuing with vendors to bring the entire site back online.
The same update said the company's 75 Broad Street facility had power and connectivity restored and was running on generator power with over 40 hours of fuel on site.
Contributing factors
The building-fed fuel system malfunctioned, and the fuel pumps could not provide diesel to the rooftop generators. The source does not state the cause of the malfunction. The storm conditions are the context in which the outage occurred, but the source does not link the fuel fault to the storm.
Lessons learned
- Fuel supply systems that depend on building infrastructure can fail independently of the generators themselves, so their supply path should be monitored and tested.
- UPS battery autonomy is finite; operators should plan for generator fuel supply failure during extended events and verify how long batteries will last.
- Sites with multiple fuel sources or the ability to refuel and restore generator power quickly are more resilient during prolonged grid loss.
More lessons on detection and monitoring, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.
Source
Published 2026-10-12. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
