A fire broke out early yesterday morning in the technical room of the NorthC Datacentre in Almere (a city near Amsterdam in the province of Flevoland), forcing firefighters to cut power to the facility and knocking out IT systems for organisations across the country. Although no servers or data storage units were destroyed, the partial loss of the power supply left clients — including Statistics Netherlands (CBS), transport operator Transdev, and Utrecht University — unable to access their platforms. Utrecht University announced it would remain closed the following day, as network outages disabled not only digital systems but also electronic access passes, preventing staff and students from entering buildings; some GP surgeries also lost access to patient records and appointment schedules, prompting at least one practice to set up an emergency phone number. Authorities in the region issued multiple NL-Alerts warning residents to keep windows and doors shut due to heavy smoke, and emergency services later sent a drone inside the building to assess the damage before declaring the blaze under control.