They were lucky.

Remote DC's were always entertaining for us. We had hundreds, and it was usually and reluctantly due to environmental conditions where they didn't want to deal with authentication issues if the network was down.

The downside was the occasional DC that disappeared. Once in Egypt, a fire caused relocation of servers and what not, and we actually had a guy take a photo of our DC on a donkey cart in the process of moving down the street. I thought those were made up things, but donkey carts usually don't need a license or insurance.