Data centreUnited StatesEIR-2327

Electrical fire in medium-voltage room at Culpeper data centre

Apr 2010Published 13 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor

MinorElectrical

Estimated damageModelled by the register's adjusterHow? Know the real figure?

Low confidence

out of service for about •• daysShown in the record →Full estimate

From the recordRoot cause Failed part

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Companies named in this entry: Terremark

What happened

Early on 30 April 2010 a fire broke out in an electrical room at a Terremark data centre on the NAP of the Capital Region campus in Culpeper, Virginia. A fire alarm was activated at around 12:30 a.m. EDT and staff at the facility confirmed there was a fire. The company said the fire was caused by an electrical fault in a medium-voltage room. It damaged one electrical-gear cabinet before being extinguished by the Terremark team together with the local fire department.

Electrical failover systems activated and one of the two active 50,000 square foot data centres on the campus was switched to generator power. The company said there was no interruption to the power supply to the computer rooms and no customers were affected.

Contributing factors

The company said the fault occurred in a medium-voltage room. No further contributing factors were reported.

Lessons learned

Test automatic transfer and generator failover regularly, so that a fault in medium-voltage switchgear does not interrupt the IT load.
Fit fire detection in electrical rooms that alerts staff promptly, and agree a response plan with the local fire service.
Record electrical room faults and review how often they occur, since the operator described such events as relatively common in data centres.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, detection and monitoring, from every incident on the register.

Source

datacenterdynamics.com

Published 2026-10-13. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.

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Chart to reuse with this story: Data centre incidents in the United States, by year, free with a credit (PNG).

The record behind this entry

The record behind EIR-2327 holds the site, the operator, the root cause, what failed, the fire service response, the type of facility, how long the outage lasted and the services that went down as fields you can filter, count and export, with its source and their verification status. The cause is not hidden: the contributing factors above give it as the sources report it. The record adds it as a field.

Site: ••••••••••••
Operator: •••••••••
Failed part: •••••••
Fire service response: ••••••••••
Type of facility: ••••••••
Outage: •••••
Services affected: ••••••••••••
Sources: ••••••••

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