That sends me back to the mid-70s. I was working for Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, MA. The company had just built out a new computer center and started moving equipment in. Suddenly, our DECSystem-10 hosting the main engineering databases shut down. Calls to the new computer center weren't being answered. After about 30 minutes we got word that it was going to be off-line for a couple of days, as were all the other systems in the new center.
A week later I ran into one of the data center operators I knew who had been on duty that day. He was sporting a cast. A fork-lift had run into one of the (2) cold water pipes for the center air conditioning and somehow managed to do it so that the water poured in to the space under the raised floor. He looked across the floor to the still empty side of the room and saw air driven water spouts start to march across the room towards the newly installed equipment. The cast on his wrist was from hitting the EPO switch at a dead run so hard he broke his wrist. Fortunately the EPO also killed the air conditioning fans and that slowed the water flow just enough that they were able to cut off water a bit before it reached the machines. It took a couple of weeks to get everything fully dried out.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
