In early June, a fire broke out in an unfinished building at the Lake Mariner data center in Somerset, New York, highlighting a lack of preparedness by the local fire department. Firefighters arrived to find no functioning alarm system, no fire suppression system, and three hydrants that were not working. Crucially, the safety documents they are legally allowed to access—important for understanding potential hazards—had reportedly been destroyed in the fire. Steve Matisz, chief of the Barker Fire Department, described the situation as challenging. His team had to enter the building with limited information, dealing with heavy black smoke from unknown chemicals. The safety sheets, which would have provided essential details about the materials present, had apparently burned up, leaving firefighters to act “kind of blind.” Matisz expressed uncertainty about whether the safety documents were indeed lost in the fire. The Lake Mariner data center is located on a former coal mine site on Lake Ontario. It is part of a $3.2 billion project, one of the largest AI data center developments in New York. The project involves multiple stakeholders, each with different roles. TeraWulf, the company that owns and operates the data center, has leased the land from a company owned by its CEO. Fluidstack, a UK-based AI company, will manage the center, while Google has secured warrants for a future 14 percent equity stake and has agreed to guarantee Fluidstack’s lease payments. Anthropic, another major AI company, is among those that will use the facility for its computing needs. The complexity of the project, with its various stakeholders and high-tech infrastructure, underscores the importance of clear communication and preparedness, especially in emergency situations. The fire at Lake Mariner serves as a reminder of the challenges faced by local emergency responders when dealing with modern, high-tech facilities that may not be fully prepared for such incidents.