Battery Room Fire at Global Switch's London Data Center Quickly Contained

Battery Room Fire at Global Switch's London Data Center Quickly Contained January 26, 2026 A minor fire at a Global Switch data center in London over the weekend has reignited industry-wide discussions on power system resilience and fire safety protocols within critical infrastructure facilities. The incident, though swiftly contained with no service disruption, underscores the persistent risks associated with the essential backup battery systems that underpin modern data center operations. The London Fire Brigade (LFB) was called to Global Switch's Docklands facility on Nutmeg Lane in Blackwall in the early hours of Saturday, January 24. According to the LFB, the call was received at 4:52 a.m., and a significant response was mobilized, involving eight fire engines and approximately 60 firefighters from multiple stations. The fire was located in the building's basement and was reportedly extinguished by a single firefighter using a handheld extinguisher by 6:43 a.m. The LFB stated the blaze was accidental, originating from the failure of a single lead-acid battery within a string of such units. Industry publication DCD reported that the affected battery room, housing around 200 units, was operated by a subcontractor. Despite the scale of the emergency response, which officials attributed to the building's high-rise nature, the damage was highly localized. There were no injuries, and Global Switch confirmed there was no disruption to customer services. The facility in question is a significant hub, offering 224MVA of power capacity and hosting what the company claims is Europe's largest deployment of Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs for cloud provider CoreWeave. This event highlights the critical, yet potentially vulnerable, role of backup power systems in an industry where uptime is paramount. It follows a similar 2023 incident at a Global Switch Paris facility, where a water leak triggered a battery fire leading to a widespread Google outage. The London fire, occurring alongside another data center fire in Scotland the same weekend, is likely to prompt renewed scrutiny from operators and insurers regarding battery room design, maintenance practices, and the adoption of newer, less volatile battery technologies. Source: datacenterdynamics