North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Tornados in Ashburn (Equinix affected)

  • From: Dre G.
  • Date: Sat Sep 18 17:11:14 2004

I was in the building last night when the weather went bad here :(

It was definatly scramble mode.

When the power went out to the welcome area obviously it got silent and I 
could hear the sounds of the magnetic doors releasing. 
(I do not like that sound) I saw a loss of HVAC but not a loss of power to 
the floor, (by floor I mean customer machines) 

I did however talk to a friend of mine last night that administers voip 
stuff here and he said they he lost power to a few devices but not all.

To my understanding none of our devices lost power just HVAC.

I expect a full report of the events will be released in a few days but 
not today (well not in detail anyway)

TO fully understand what happened and in what order someones going to have 
alot of digging to do thru alot of data to get the real story.

As of right now this area is still without power but EQUINIX has 40,000 
gallons of fuel. A 500 gallon an hour burn rate, trucks coming with fuel, 
and ETA Of midnight for the transformer being fixed in the area.


 Dre G.

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004, Robert E.Seastrom wrote:

> 
> 
> John Starta <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29911-2004Sep17.html
> 
> Printer-friendly version for your signin-bypassing pleasure:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29911-2004Sep17?language=printer
> 
> I was a little closer to the Ashburn one than I really wanted to be -
> was able to see it in the distance to the north (heading south to
> north as would be expected given it was from the eastern edge of a
> northbound heading hurricane remnant) as I drove along the Greenway.
> 
> Notwithstanding an incident report sent out by Equinix at 2012 stating
> "The Chiller plant is fully functional", our temperature graphs
> indicate that there was a cooling issue at Equinix Ashburn F from 1815
> until 1855; the start time corresponds with the
> Chantilly/Dulles/Ashburn tornado being in the area of Equinix.
> 
> Another tenant at Ashburn F states that there were AC power
> disturbances.  I can not speak to that; as far as I can tell (no
> special instrumentation in my installations) my power was fine.
> 
> The reason that I bring this up is that I believe a report which
> is posted two hours after the event and glosses over potentially
> serious operational anomalies by stating that everything is cool (in
> the present tense) does not serve anyone's best interests.  I
> understand and accept the two hour delay from the start of the
> incident, but I expect scrupulous honesty in after-action assessments,
> not a marketing-driven assertion that everything is Just Fine.
> 
> I encourage the powers that be at Equinix to make public (or at least
> send to its customers) a revised statement that truthfully reflects
> what happened Friday night.
> 
>                                         ---Rob (KE4DJT, spotter FXN16)
> 
>