On the morning of May 24, the social network X became unavailable to millions of users worldwide. The cause of the large-scale outage was a fire at the PDX11 data center in Hillsboro, Oregon. This facility is owned by Digital Realty, one of the largest data center operators supporting Elon Musk’s infrastructure.
According to HotHardware, citing Wired, the fire started at approximately 10:21 a.m. local time on Thursday. Firefighters who responded to the scene found that the fire originated in a battery unit. While the exact type of batteries has not been confirmed, they are presumed to have been either lithium-ion cells or lead-acid.
The fire was successfully contained within the data center and did not spread to other parts of the building. A Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson reported that the room housing the equipment was filled with smoke. Firefighters remained on site until 3 p.m. local time. However, the precise time when their work concluded was not specified.
Response and Restoration Efforts
“All employees were evacuated, and there were no casualties or injuries,” stated Ryan Young, vice president of operations in the Americas at Digital Realty. “We continue to monitor the situation, focusing on the safety of personnel, maintaining the integrity of the facility, and minimizing the impact on customers.”
On Thursday and Friday, the platform experienced no major disruptions, reminds NIX Solutions. However, on the morning of the 24th, many users reported complete or partial access loss. The monitoring website Downdetector recorded a sharp increase in complaints during this period, with reports exceeding 26,000.
Earlier, the official X technical support account posted: “We are aware that some users are experiencing issues with the platform. There was an outage in the data center. The team is working to fix the problem.”
As of now, the social network’s operation has been restored. Yet we’ll keep you updated as more information about the incident and any future implications becomes available.