Major data center fire highlights criticality of IT services

Uptime Institute’s outages database suggests data center fires are infrequent, and rarely have a significant impact on operations. Uptime has identified 14 publicly reported, high-profile data center outages caused by fire or fire suppression systems since 2020. The frequency of fires is not increasing relative to the IT load or number of data centers but, uncontained, they are potentially disastrous to facilities, and subsequent outages can be ruinous for the business.

SK Group, South Korea’s second largest conglomerate, is the latest high-profile organization to suffer a major data center fire, following a breakout at a multistory colocation facility operated by its SK Inc. C&C subsidiary in Pangyo (just south of Seoul) on October 15. According to police reports, the fire started in a battery room before spreading quickly to the rest of the building. It took firefighters around eight hours to bring the blaze under control.