Following the fire at the NorthC data center in the Dutch town of Almere, the first inspections have been carried out. The situation has since been downgraded to GRIP 0. Smoke development in the server rooms remained limited thanks to the fire separation in place, says the data center operator. Teams are working to restore power and connectivity via external emergency power supplies.
The situation at the NorthC data center in Almere has gradually returned to normal. What began as a GRIP 2 situation on Wednesday and dropped to GRIP 1 in the evening was further downgraded to GRIP 0 during the night of May 7–8. This means that emergency services have the situation fully under control and the building has been partially reopened.
Last night, NorthC’s teams conducted the first inspections. The findings are relatively positive. Smoke development in the server rooms remained limited. The fire separation in place did its job and prevented further spread throughout the building.
Read more: NorthC fire: data center outage has alarming consequences
Emergency power to save customer equipment
Meanwhile, NorthC’s teams are working on setting up external emergency power supplies. The goal is to restore customer equipment as quickly and safely as possible. No exact recovery time has been communicated yet.
Yesterday’s fire had far-reaching consequences for numerous organizations, from the Chamber of Commerce to Utrecht University (UU). UU will keep its doors closed on Friday and experienced outages of its network, applications, and even access passes on Thursday.
NorthC and the Antin Acquisition
NorthC manages more than twenty data centers in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. In late 2025, it was announced that investor Antin Infrastructure Partners would acquire NorthC from DWS and other shareholders. That transaction was expected to be completed in the first half of 2026.
The company promises customers a follow-up update as soon as there is more clarity regarding the expected recovery time.