NorthC data center in Almere back online after fire

The data center in Almere, Noord-Holland, has been brought back online after a fire last Thursday disrupted digital infrastructure across multiple Dutch institutions, including Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the University of Utrecht. NorthC, the facility’s owner, restored a temporary power supply on Wednesday, allowing customers to restart systems in phases, although some organizations continued to experience disruption during the recovery period.

The fire broke out last Thursday at the Almere facility and caused widespread outages among users of the data center. NorthC said it activated a temporary power supply on Wednesday, enabling a gradual restart of ICT systems. The company is working to restore normal grid power and said the temporary installation will remain available as a backup. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

CBS was among the affected organizations. After the outage, the agency was hard to reach, and its database was unavailable, forcing adjustments to its publication planning. Following the restoration of power and the phased system restarts, CBS continued to experience disruptions during the reboot. According to the information provided, the agency has resolved those issues and fixed the database and storage-related problems.

The University of Utrecht also experienced ongoing disruption to its network, applications, and websites after the fire. Digital access passes stopped working, affecting campus operations. The university began restarting hundreds of servers after 5 p.m. Wednesday, a process expected to take several days due to the need for controlled sequencing. During the recovery period, employees and students were unable to work online, and online studying was discouraged. Campus buildings remained open.