TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner data center fire raises safety concerns

When firefighters from the Barker Fire Department arrived at TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner data center campus in Somerset, New York in early June, they found themselves in a situation no first responder wants to face. No functioning fire alarm. No suppression system. Three hydrants that didn’t work. And the safety data sheets that would have told them what chemicals were producing the heavy black smoke filling the unfinished building had, according to TeraWulf, burned up in the fire itself. Fire Chief Steve Matisz said his crew went into the building “kind of blind.” He added he wasn’t sure what to think about the claim that the safety sheets had been destroyed in the blaze. “It’s been a difficult situation,” Matisz said. A campus in transition, and apparently in disarray The Lake Mariner campus sits on the site of a retired coal plant in upstate New York, a location TeraWulf began operating in 2022 primarily for Bitcoin mining. The company has been aggressively pivoting the facility toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. TeraWulf has been targeting a combined capacity of 500 to 750 MW across several buildings by the end of 2026. Tenants at the campus in...