or: water and datacenters don't mix. this is the datacenter the forums are hosted in: yes, that's a boat. in the basement of where some of our stuff is hosted. it had all the power stuff, including the backup power. apparently those don't work when submerged in water. whodda thunk ~ kinda looking like some a new first person shooter level or something. thankfully the servers weren't on this level. this was with orangefiber / alphared. more pictures official blog entry from alphared (not quite as interesting)
Believe it or not, seeing the pictures, first thought that came to my mind was Houston! This happened to my son's company a few years back. All power in the basement and to top it off, all computers, servers, offices, etc were on the first floor....also flooded. Took them about a week to get back online, etc. And of course, they transferred their entire company to another building and everything put on second floor, with first floor reserved for visitors, etc.
I'd be quite upset if the actual servers were there. honestly I found this too hilarious to care about the downtime.