A fire in a battery room in Hillsboro affects one of the data centers servicing Elon Musk’s social network, causing a global outage.
A fire that broke out on Thursday, May 22, at a data center located in Hillsboro, Oregon, has triggered a global service disruption for the social network X, owned by Elon Musk. The incident, which took place at the Hillsboro Technology Park, impacted a battery room, according to reports from Wired.
Firefighters arrived at the scene at 10:21 AM. Although the flames did not spread to other parts of the building, the room was completely filled with smoke. This was explained by Piseth Pich, spokesperson for the Hillsboro Fire Department.
Large-scale disruption on platform X
The day after the incident, the social network X experienced a significant global outage. The website Downdetector.com logged over 6,000 notifications from affected users around the world. Through its official engineering account, the company posted a message on its developer platform:
“X is aware that some users are experiencing performance issues. We have suffered an outage at one of our data centers and the team is actively working to resolve the situation.”
According to Wired, X leases space in a data center building linked to Digital Realty, one of the leading global digital infrastructure service companies. In a written statement to the local media Oregon Live, Digital Realty confirmed that the incident was under control, that all personnel were evacuated safely, and that no injuries were reported.
“We continue to monitor the situation, prioritizing the safety of personnel, the integrity of the facilities, and minimizing the impact on customers,” the company stated.
However, Digital Realty has not confirmed whether X was directly within the area affected by the fire.
Previous infrastructure restructuring
Before being acquired by Elon Musk, the company—then Twitter—operated with three main data centers: in Portland (Oregon), Sacramento (California), and Atlanta (Georgia). In 2022, Musk ordered the closure of the Sacramento center, relocating over 2,500 server racks to the facilities in Portland and Atlanta. Following that decision, the social network experienced a seven-hour service outage. Since then, Tesla has taken over the lease of the Sacramento center.
The data centers that Digital Realty operates in the Portland area have a total area of 56,500 m², spread across two buildings. This reinforces Oregon’s role as one of the key locations for X’s infrastructure.
Source: datacenterdynamics, Oregon Live, Wired