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Data Center Explosion, Fire or FBI Bust?

June 3, 2008

Update: Interview with Yvonne Donaldson of The Planet.

What is going on in Houston? Reports range from explosions, to fires to FBI Raids. The Planet operates a data center in Houston that recently went offline (I wrote about it here). The company claimed power to the facility was interrupted when a transformer exploded. Official reports that three walls were blown down causing a fire; but also claimed no servers were destroyed. Observers on the scene indicated they didn’t see a single fire truck or emergency vehicle during the incident. We contacted the Houston Fire Department who indicated that they had no idea what we were talking about. We heard reports that the fire marshal was keeping employees out of the facility and we called the Houston Fire Department for a second time, but this time the representative indicated the would call us back, we haven’t been contacted since our call. This afternoon we talked to a customer who claimed to have entered the facility, but after confronting him I learned that he didn’t actually get in. By the end of the day I talked to another customer who indicated that the FBI was swarming all over the facility, removing servers. Who knows what is going on, but it sounds crazy. Anyone have the REAL scoop? Please contact me.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Personal 

Comments

22 Responses to “Data Center Explosion, Fire or FBI Bust?”

  1. Alycad Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    As someone said in some other place, or maybe it was an allien atack…

  2. Karl Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    I’m guessing it would be a municipal fire department (Katy? Woodlands? Conroe? They don’t exactly publish addresses for DCs…) that responded to the fire, not Houston FD.

    Calling HFD for a fire in Conroe is like calling Dallas FD for a fire in Plano. Not only did they not respond, but they didn’t even know about or care about the incident.

    Anyway, please keep all hands and feet inside the conspiracy, and make sure your tinfoil hat is firmly secured to your head.

  3. Alexander Muse Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    FYI - we gave the address to the HFD.

  4. PsychMajor Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm

    Maybe they found out that Osama Bin Laden was working as a DC Tech for the Planet!

    In all seriousness, that is freaky. I saw pictures that someone took and you’re right, there isn’t even one vehicle that was from the FD, not even a red Suburban or anything.

    I am calling The Smoking Gun right now. This is way better than Elvis’ FBI File!

  5. Karl Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    Psych — Well, yeah, the fire happened on Sat. night around dinnertime. The only pictures that I know that have been posted, from PrisonTalk, were taken at 8pm the next day. Some of the trucks that are visible (the red ones) are from a fire/sprinkler system company, and the rest belong to electrical contractors (A&H or ECP — if I remember correctly, ECP is a Liebert distributor.) The one place where you can see into the building a fire escape / side door is open and it’s dark inside. I dunno, everything on my end checks out.

    They don’t exactly leave fire trucks hanging around for 24 hours after they clear the occupants to return to the building, you know, just in -case- something else happens. I suppose if you were really concerned you could do a written public records act request to HFD… that seems to be the channel offered by their website to pull up old incidents from the active incidents log.

  6. Rodney Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 pm

    it is definately in Houston, just at the beltway and 45 north off benmar drive
    we just got some video tonight and man, did anyone say cops and security swarming the place right now….www.eleven2.com/outage/

  7. Dylan Avery Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 7:25 am

    I’ve got video of the servers that were actually removed from the data center prior to the explosion; they are safe in a warehouse in Michigan. Were you aware that all employees were notified in advance of the explosion, that’s why nobody was injured? It wasn’t an explosion, it was a bomb. Does anyone know where Bill Ayers was the night of the explosion? I’ve been told by a baggage handler in Houston that Ayers was seen carrying two backpacks out of Houston Hobby a few hours prior to the ‘explosion.’

    C’mon… this is Houston, the capital of Big Oil in America. Bush/Cheney iare responsible for this downtime, they are trying to drum up more contracts for Halliburton. They are trying to start another dot com ‘boom.’

  8. Max Power Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Someone has their aluminum foil cap on a little too tight.

  9. Jeff Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    I made a call and Local and County dispatchers said that there was no call for any kind of explosion or fire within the time frame ThePlanet said it happened.

  10. CodyLoco Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    I’m starting to think this is getting a little way too far-fetched!
    Come on what would the FBI be doing with the servers?

  11. Alexander Muse Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

    Maybe they are thinking about starting a shared hosting business, but can’t get Congress to fund them…

  12. Shii Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    The FBI might need servers for logs, but I don’t know why they would need OVER 9000 of them

  13. Chuck Cobb Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    I have been searching to find out who owns TP and what I found out I do not believe so I will not post it here, but I would like for someone else to search and see if it comes back to a man in the west indies, if so we may have the reason for a FBI raid.

  14. Trey Cooper Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    http://www.eleven2.com/outage/

    is now returning a 404 .. page not found error.

    I was looking at that page earlier today after lunch —– or did I think I saw that page ……… I’m looking thru the cache now ….

  15. James Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    You guys are unbelievable. A conspiracy theory over this? If the FBI wanted in the DC they would simply have to get a warrent, not blow a wall off.

  16. fbi Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Yes we took down the houston datacenter, we are going to take down the other one tomorrow, and then hit dallas.

  17. Chuck Cobb Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    Well now they kick ya off their forum if you even ask, but the reason this punk kid (Tomy Durden Data Center Manager ) kicked me off was he is calling customers trolls for asking questions. I can only assume his bosses feel the same way about the customers then because he is not afraid of losing his job over it.

    here is my post that got me kicked off the forum

    QUOTE(Tomy Durden @ Jun 4 2008, 06:22 PM)
    I like that you guys have a great imagination and all, with the conspiracy theories, but you guys are just trolling at this point. Please stop with the false accusations.

    How RUDE of you, but then TP has not shown much respect for it’s customer in this now have they. All you need to do to end any kind of questioning about what happen is show a few pictures. That is it, it would put an end to all the questions regarding what really happen. But you would rather call your customers trolls than provide them with clear answers to questions.

    How very sad that you and I can only assume your CEO feels your customers are trolls. I included him because if HE did not fell the same way that you do and has already expressed it to you (behind closed doors I am sure) then you would not have call your customers trolls in open forum for fear of losing your job at TP. Therefore one can only think if he would allow you to call the customers trolls, then he must as well… First you ruin my business, then you call me a troll for asking questions… Sad, just sad.

  18. spammer Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    what really happened was the abuse department found i was using their servers so they launched a strike and used far too much bombs

  19. anti-spammer Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    Wasn’t the FBI. Was us.

  20. Tina W. Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    contact me and i can send you the e-mail they sent out to us as customers if you are interested.

  21. Austin Marshall Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    I’m guessing the municipal fire dept. would be the last line of defense in a fire that occurs in a data center — water doesn’t play well with electronics or data-sensitive hardware.

    Also, The Planet has more than one data center in Houston.

  22. Hongo Bongo Says:
    June 6th, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Sokmusum FBI’a sana birsey olmasin :)

    It was E.T., he (or maybe she, does anyone know E.T.’s gender?) fall down from his bicycle.

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