Case Studies wanted - Fire Protection in Datacenters

[KiwiMace]

Does anyone have or know where to get case studies about Fire Protection related incidents. I'm giving a presentation on the below subjects and I want some spice to make the content more... real.

I'm particularly interested in hearing (preferably traceable) stories about:

1. Fires of any description in Data Centers
2. Pre-action systems
3. Clean agent systems

A golden example;
The Planet data center in Houston recently caught fire in the transformer and burnt out a load of cables. Only one level of the two level building was affected, but the Fire Marshall would not let them run the emergency genset to power up the unaffected area until several days later.

You can leave out company names if you have to.

 

[stookeyfpe]

Why do you want my intellectual property? To make money?

My spice (whatever the hell that means) is you gotta pay to play.

 

[stookeyfpe]

OK I apologize. Lots of late nights in the last month. What are you seeking?

PS: Yout spice statement still irritates me.

 

[KiwiMace]

Apology accepted. This wasn't a personal message to you. I am looking for real examples of data center fires to add... "relevance" to a presentation on fire protection needs for data centers.

 

[stookeyfpe]

I'm not sure about the loss history but I've always approached this issue from the perspective of the potential for business interruption. For example, I know of one computer manufacturer whose data center averages about $0.6M/hour in sales - from a business interruption perspective, the time it takes from the time one data center goes down until the remote data center becomes available can easily cover the costs of the fire protection systems.

Secondly, data centers have very high electrical demands which introduces an added source of ignition.

 

[KiwiMace]

Appreciate the input stookey. I'm hoping for anecdotes from fire or false alarm situations.

I have some pretty good resources for data center fire protection and detection methodologies, which is the guts of my presentation. Luckily for me and my clients, I am short of stories to tell about the systems actually going off.

 

[stookeyfpe]

You should reflect and reinforce on your low loss history. The other thing to consider is that other code requirements may be driving sprinkler protection in your buildings, i.e., allowable area, allowable height, other higher hazard occupancies.

I do have a story where firefighters responded to a switch and data center and wanted to disconnect power. When I arrived as the responding fire protection engineer, I advised the incident commander that was a bad idea because the generator would immediately engage and re-energize the building. Fortunately they listened and 30 minutes later we figured out what the problem was - nuisance smoke detector in a battery room. The fact that the incident commander wanted to disconnect power in a building with multiple redundancy power supplies amused and scared me.

 

[cdafd]

stookeyfpe

Love it when a lot of people put a lot of effort into making a building safer for everyone, and the firefighters do not pre plan the building

Did hear of one inspector witnessing a clean agent test and hit the power kill button, because wanted to see it actually work. Problem was the business was in operation and shut down thier system or awhile and as stated loss of money due to computers down.

That is why I let someone else push the buttons.

 

[KiwiMace]

Thanks for the comments re: shutdowns.

This is typical in data centers. NFPA 75 and the NEC sect. 645 require that complying data centers have an emergency power off button that cuts the power to the racks on both sides of the UPS. All power goes down to protect the fire fighters in case the hoses have to come out.

Smoke Detectors are usually cross-zoned to help prevent your kind of false alarm callout, two would have to fail.