A $3.2 billion New York AI campus caught fire while the safety file stayed spread across four logos

An early June fire broke out in an unfinished building at the $3.2 billion Lake Mariner AI data center campus in Somerset, New York, Petala Ironcloud at Ars Technica writes.

Barker Fire Chief Steve Matisz said his crew went in kind of blind: no working alarm, no suppression, and three dead hydrants.

Safety data sheets they are entitled to see reportedly burned in the blaze. No one was hurt.

The site sits on a former coal mine on Lake Ontario. It is one of New York's largest AI buildouts. The logos stacked on it do not share one safety desk.

TeraWulf owns and operates the center on land leased from a company owned by its own CEO. Fluidstack, a UK firm, will run it.

Google holds warrants, options on future equity, for a stake that could reach 14 percent, and has agreed to guarantee Fluidstack's lease payments if Fluidstack cannot pay. Anthropic is among the AI companies whose compute demand the facility exists to serve.

TeraWulf told Ars it is responsible for operational safety and emergency preparedness. After an after-action review it said it added Knox boxes, lockboxes firefighters can open with a master key, more hydrants, and safety-sheet go-bags.

When Matisz spoke in mid-August, a Knox box meeting was scheduled. On hydrants he was direct: as far as he knew, they were still dry.

The fire did little to slow construction. The ownership map still spreads the next question across four names.

Jobs are part of the same mismatch. A 2024 planning presentation put full buildout at 35 to 40 permanent jobs for a facility drawing up to 500 megawatts. A 2019 power-discount application for the same project scope promised 165 permanent jobs and $85 million in capital.

Governor Kathy Hochul said in July that data centers do not deliver significant long-term jobs. Last month she put a moratorium on new hyperscaler permits, the giant cloud and AI campuses. Lake Mariner's buildout was already permitted.

Anthropic published a February ratepayer covenant, a pledge on power prices and grid costs, covering electricity price increases, 100 percent of grid infrastructure costs, and new generation to match demand. Lake Mariner is covered for electricity pricing. A source familiar with Anthropic's thinking told Ars there was no detail on verifying clean-energy claims through Fluidstack or TeraWulf.

On July 6 TeraWulf announced a separate 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic for a Kentucky facility. CEO Paul Prager told Bloomberg's The Close it was one of the first things they had gone direct on: no Fluidstack, no Google backstop.

Direct contracts get clearer terms. Leased stacks get murkier verification.

TeraWulf's clean-energy language shifted from 95 percent zero-carbon in a 2024 CSR, its corporate social responsibility report, to low- and zero-carbon pairing in an April 2026 policy. The company says the claim rests on the regional grid mix, not a contract tied to a specific plant. Neither TeraWulf, Anthropic, nor Google appears able to verify how much of Lake Mariner's blend meets a strict clean bar in public.

Two months after the fire, Matisz said the water supply problems that forced tankers had not been fixed. Construction had not slowed.

One campus. Four logos. When the hydrants stay dry, the safety file still has no single owner.

Sources

• Ars Technica — Lake Mariner / AI data center accountability