A fire broke out at Digital Realty's SIN11 data center in Loyang, Singapore, on September 10, 2024, and has continued into its second day, with damping down operations still ongoing as of the morning of September 11.

The fire alarm was triggered at 7:45 AM on September 10, prompting the evacuation of all personnel by 8:15 AM, with no injuries reported.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was alerted to the incident shortly after the alarm sounded and deployed four water jets along with activating the sprinkler system to combat the blaze, which involved lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries, known for their difficulty in extinguishing due to their tendency to reignite and release toxic fumes, complicated firefighting efforts.

The fire affected critical areas of the data center, including two battery rooms, two power supply rooms, and an equipment storage room on the third floor.

Digital Realty confirmed that the explosion led to elevated temperatures and a fire, but its disaster recovery procedures functioned as intended.

Alibaba Cloud reported that the fire caused abnormal temperature rises within the data center, affecting network connectivity for some of its cloud products and warning of potential outages.

The incident has disrupted services for several companies, including Lazada and ByteDance, prompting affected customers to activate their business continuity plans.

While the company did not specify which clients were impacted, it advised all affected customers to implement their business continuity plans.

Key cloud products, including Redis, MongoDB, and RDS MySQL, successfully completed disaster recovery switching to ensure continuity for many customers.

The full extent of the damage and timeline for recovery remain unclear as Alibaba Cloud continues to work on restoring normal operations.

As a precaution, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) will issue a dangerous building order and closure order for certain areas of the facility.