Fire Breaks Out at NorthC Data Center Near Amsterdam, Firefighters Still Battling Blaze
May 7, 2026
Fire Breaks Out at NorthC Data Center Near Amsterdam, Firefighters Still Battling Blaze
A significant fire erupted at a NorthC data center facility in Almere, the Netherlands, on Thursday morning, disrupting services for multiple organizations and drawing a large-scale emergency response. The incident underscores the vulnerability of critical digital infrastructure to physical hazards, even in well-established European data hub markets.
The fire was reported at approximately 8:45 a.m. local time on May 7 at the company's data center located on Rondebeltweg in the Sallandsekant business park, just outside Amsterdam. By 3:15 p.m., NorthC confirmed that the blaze had not yet been extinguished. “The fire department has indicated that it will need several more hours to bring the fire fully under control and safely clear the building,” the company stated, adding that it is currently impossible to enter the premises. Once the site is cleared, NorthC said it will immediately launch a technical investigation to determine the impact and implement appropriate emergency measures.
The fire is concentrated at the rear of the building, where technical facilities are housed. “At this moment, nothing can be said with certainty regarding the cause of the fire and the exact extent of the damage to the infrastructure,” NorthC noted. The local safety authority, Veiligheidsregio Flevoland, reported that five fire engines, three ladder trucks, and a specialized “firefighting robot” are on the scene. As a precaution, a diesel tank at the facility is being cooled using a crash tender from Lelystad Airport. The Almere facility, which spans 26,000 square meters and offers 11 MW of power, serves as a key regional hub.
The outage has had a cascading impact on local institutions. Utrecht University confirmed that its systems were affected, while the local water board Hoogheemraadschap De Stichtse Rijnlanden reported a network outage. Public transport operator Transdev said its bus and tram services were also disrupted. Additionally, SURF, the Dutch ICT service provider for education and research institutions, reported that several of its members have infrastructure running in the affected data center. IBM Cloud also disclosed issues at its Amsterdam 03 facility, which is hosted within the same data center, due to the fire.
NorthC was formed in 2019 from the merger of Dutch data center firms TDCG and NLDC, originally a subsidiary of telecoms company KPN. The company was acquired by Antin Infrastructure Partners in December 2025 from DWS. It currently operates more than a dozen data centers across the Netherlands, eight in Germany, and four in Switzerland, with additional facilities under development in all three markets. This incident highlights the operational risks inherent in colocation and cloud services, where a single physical event can ripple across multiple tenants and critical public services.
Source: datacenterdynamics
