The Garland Building suffered a prolonged power outage on Sept. 12-13 2005. The downtime was documented in a follow-up report to customers by Media Temple, another hosting tenant. The building lost grid power when a Los Angeles Power and Water Department (PWD) employee accidentally cut a power line, leaving 2 million customers in the dark. The Garland Building is equipped with five generators, but when two of them failed, the remaining three began shedding load and the facility lost power.

Some hosting tenants at 1200 W. 7th note that the building has infrastructure that would seem to make such outages unlikely. “The building power is supplied by two separate grids from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power,” colo provider IX2 Networks notes on its web site. “Unlike most buildings in downtown Los Angeles, this two-grid system gives the Garland Building a distinct advantage with the ability to switch to an alternate grid in the event one fails. The primary feed to the building is a preferred service that receives priority over all other grids in the event of an emergency.”