A major fire erupted Thursday morning at a data center leased by Elon Musk’s social media company X, located in Hillsboro, Oregon, causing significant damage estimated at $1 billion and raising concerns over the company’s infrastructure resilience and safety protocols. The blaze, which began around 10:21 a.m., prompted an extensive emergency response, with firefighters battling the fire well into the afternoon.
According to multiple anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the fire originated in a battery room inside the Hillsboro Technology Park facility. Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich confirmed the presence of a room heavily filled with smoke, where lithium-ion batteries used as backup power sources were involved in the incident.
While the fire was contained within that battery room and did not spread to other parts of the building, the smoke and fire caused severe disruption. As of 3 p.m., emergency crews remained on site to fully extinguish the blaze and ensure safety.
X, formerly known as Twitter before Musk’s acquisition, has not issued an immediate statement regarding the impact on their server operations or data integrity. The company has been tight-lipped about the incident, and it remains unclear whether the fire has affected live data services or user traffic.
Given that the data center is part of a larger network of facilities supporting X’s online infrastructure, the incident raises urgent questions about backup systems and operational continuity.
Before Elon Musk’s takeover, X operated three primary data centers in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This tri-center system was designed to maintain service reliability by distributing server loads to prevent any single center from becoming overwhelmed. However, in a controversial cost-cutting move around Christmas Eve 2022, Musk shut down the Sacramento facility, shifting over 2,573 server racks to the Portland and Atlanta data centers over the following six months.
This consolidation may have increased the operational pressure on the remaining centers, particularly the Portland site, where the fire occurred.
The Portland facility where the fire broke out is leased from Digital Realty, one of the world’s largest data center developers. Digital Realty’s vice president of Americas operations, Ryan Young, confirmed the incident at the PDX11 site and emphasized that the fire had been contained with no injuries reported.
Young stressed that the company prioritized the safety of personnel and the integrity of the facility, while actively monitoring the situation to minimize disruption to customers. However, he declined to disclose which companies, including X, occupy space in the building or to comment on the extent of the damage.
The presence of lithium-ion batteries as backup power sources is standard in modern data centers, but their volatile nature has made them a frequent cause of fires worldwide. Maintenance challenges and inadequate safety measures have historically contributed to such blazes, resulting in costly damages and service interruptions.
Notably, Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson Pich remarked that he could not recall any previous battery-related fires in the Oregon region’s numerous data centers, underlining the rarity and severity of this incident.
The fire’s timing and scale come amid increasing scrutiny of Elon Musk’s related company xAI, which has recently faced criticism over its rapid expansion at a new data center in Memphis, Tennessee. The Memphis site, named Colossus by Musk, was built at an accelerated pace to support the training of AI systems like Grok, requiring massive power capacity.
To meet energy demands, xAI installed over 30 methane-powered gas turbines. However, because the turbines are designated as temporary, the facility bypassed federal pollution control permits, exploiting loopholes in the Clean Air Act. This approach has drawn backlash from local communities, predominantly Black and Brown, already burdened by high pollution levels from existing industrial operations.
The Hillsboro fire, therefore, casts further light on the risks associated with rapid data center expansions driven by AI development and social media operations under Musk’s conglomerate. As these companies scale up their infrastructure to meet growing demands, questions about environmental impact, safety compliance, and long-term sustainability are coming into sharper focus.
Financially, the $1 billion damage estimate marks a substantial blow to X and Musk’s broader technology empire. This figure encompasses not only the physical destruction of equipment and facilities but also the potential loss of data, downtime costs, and subsequent rebuilding expenses.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2171035708-033bbe8a31534e048631f5e839f0bf44.jpg)
Given the strategic importance of data centers to X’s social media platform and xAI’s AI initiatives, restoring full functionality quickly will be critical to avoid extended service disruptions and further reputational damage.
In the wake of the fire, industry analysts will be closely watching how X and Digital Realty respond operationally and whether this incident triggers reassessments of data center safety protocols, backup power solutions, and infrastructure diversification strategies. For a company already under financial and operational pressure from rapid expansions, public controversies, and a competitive tech landscape, the fire adds a significant challenge.
While emergency crews successfully evacuated all personnel without injuries, the damage to vital data infrastructure underscores the thin margin for error in high-tech, high-capacity data center management. With lithium-ion battery risks increasingly in the spotlight, it is expected that both industry leaders and regulators may push for more stringent safety standards to prevent similar disasters in the future.
For now, customers, investors, and users of X await further updates on service impacts and the company’s plans to manage the fallout. The incident serves as a stark reminder that behind the rapid advancements in AI and social media lies a complex and fragile physical infrastructure vulnerable to unexpected catastrophic events.
