Fire at Lake Mariner data center site: alarms absent and hydrants dry during blaze

A fire swept an unfinished building at the Lake Mariner data campus in Somerset, New York, in early June; firefighters reported no working alarm, no suppression system and three dry hydrants at the scene. Barker Fire Department chief Steve Matisz said his crew entered the building “kind of blind,” encountering heavy black smoke and chemicals without access to safety data sheets that reportedly burned in the blaze.

TeraWulf, which owns and operates the data center, said it is responsible “for operational safety and emergency preparedness at the Lake Mariner Data Campus, including required safety systems and coordinating with local first responders.” Chief strategy officer Kerri Langlais said the company implemented Knox boxes, additional hydrants and safety-data-sheet “go-bags” after an after-action review with the county.

When Matisz spoke with a reporter in mid‑August, he said a Knox box representative had visited the site and a meeting was scheduled to build out the program, but added: “As far as I know, [they] are still dry… I haven’t seen work done on them.” The fire caused no injuries and did little to slow construction.

The Lake Mariner project, a $3.2 billion campus on a former coal mine on Lake Ontario, is one of New York’s largest AI data center buildouts. The corporate structure around the project is complex: TeraWulf is the owner-operator, Somerset Operating Company — the landlord entity — is owned by TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager; Fluidstack will run the center; Google holds warrants for a future 14% equity stake and has agreed to guarantee Fluidstack’s lease payments; and Anthropic is among the companies intended to use the facility’s compute capacity.

Town officials and residents sought answers from TeraWulf after the fire, but the company’s communications team did not respond to community meeting requests, including from Somerset town supervisor Jeffrey Dewart. A 2024 planning-board presentation quotes a TeraWulf project manager saying the full buildout would create 35 to 40 jobs and draw up to 500 megawatts — far below the 165 permanent jobs and $85 million in capital investment promised in 2019 when Somerset Operating Company applied for a power discount. Paul Prager did not respond to a request for comment about the discrepancy.

The New York Power Authority reviews compliance annually and can adjust site benefits if commitments are unmet. In July, Governor Kathy Hochul placed a moratorium on hyperscaler data center development and noted the gap between large project scales and limited long-term job creation. Experts cited in the reporting also emphasized that construction creates many temporary jobs while ongoing operations require far fewer staff unless there are explicit commitments to train local workers.

The episode illustrates how responsibility for safety, operations, finances and reputational impacts can be diffuse across the many entities involved in large AI data center projects, complicating accountability when energy use, environmental footprint or safety records draw scrutiny.