Love your faith in humanity but I think we'd both be surprised about how little other hosting providers have changed after this incident.
Freeflowing does not excuse not having proper auto-closing dampers, triggered by the fire alarms or suppression system.
Automatic power disconnects based on fire suppression system triggering are pretty standard. Most of the systems are fail-safe, meaning if the fire suppression panel loses power or is disconnected from the breakers feeding the room, the breakers trip off.
That there were no automatic shutoffs or easily accessible breakers to disable the generators is shocking. Most NOCs I've visited, there are remote genset controls on one of the walls, often remote transfer switch controls as well. At the very least, on the way out the door someone in the NOC should have pushed the right buttons.
I've never even heard of a commercial datacenter that didn't have fire suppression. Some companies go for preaction systems to reduce the chances of a "everything gets completely fucked by water" systems (gaseous systems are the gold standard, hugely expensive to install compared to water.)
They had wood ceilings!?
In my career in the US, I've been around numerous situations where it was pretty obvious the fire inspector was being paid off or at the very least had an extremely cordial relationship with the building management. My guess is that something similar was happening here.
I don't understand how they managed to have insurance, or get the ISO certifications they claimed they had.
What fire department didn't do the walkthrough? Here that is obligatory and when that happens you can be sure that even a carton sti left from the newest installation is reprimanded.
The last room I took take of was accepted with protocol by an architect. The carpenter and electrition had to explain every single change they made and justify that fire protection was reasonable (e.g. if necessary an extra layer of plasterboard and plaster on every small bit that could ignite was mandatory to gain an est. 30min on top here and there)
ISO: what apart from documentation is necessary for ISO? What Standard are you referring to?
Apart from Host Europe in Nottingham who no longer exist there AFAIK. That was worse than OVH.
This OVH DC was designed to a cost rather than a safety specification and the risk did not pay off.
what leads you to say that? just curious