Ask HN: Question about caching and HN error page

Yesterday I was still seeing the HN error page on all of my devices, but checking Twitter it didn't seem like HN was still down. It wasn't until I hit Ctrl+F5 in Firefox that HN loaded properly for me.

I'm assuming that this was due to a caching issue but I'm not sure. Is there anything HN could have done to prevent this?

Thanks!