US AI data centre gas outage forces Virginia residents to evacuate over air quality concerns
A power failure at a Virginia data centre forced the facility onto backup generators for 24 hours, sending thick smoke into the air and driving nearby residents from their homes.
An artificial intelligence data center in Virginia, USA, activated its backup generators for an extended period due to a gas supply issue, prompting nearby residents to evacuate due to worsening air quality. The incident occurred at the Vantage Data Centers VA2 Campus in Sterling, Virginia, on a day when a power failure led to the generators' activation at 8:15 p.m. On the following day, local authorities ordered residents to leave their homes because of the large amount of smoke produced.
This situation was exacerbated by the fact that smoke from Canadian wildfires was already spreading through the region. The data center operates independently, relying on eight natural-gas turbines for primary power, which meant it had to resort to running on diesel generators when the natural gas delivery system failed. While standard operations usually limit generator runtimes to 10 to 30 minutes during testing phases, the uninterrupted use of generators for several hours was highly unusual and resulted in significant disruption to the surrounding community.
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