Utrecht University (UU) is filing a claim against Dutch telco KPN in the wake of a data center fire in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

A fire broke out at NorthC’s data center on Rondebeltweg in Almere on the morning of May 7. The fire was brought under control the same day, but took the facility offline for almost a week.

There were no reported injuries. No IT gear was damaged by fire, which was concentrated around the site's power infrastructure. An investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.

According to its student publication, DUB, the university is lodging an ‘open-ended’ claim for damages with KPN relating to the fire.

Utrecht University has had a contract with KPN for services hosted out of the NorthC data center since 2016. According to the publication, UU “holds KPN responsible for the damage suffered.”

KPN told DUB it neither confirms nor denies having received the claim for damages. A spokesperson said: “If we receive a claim for damages, we will examine it.”

The settlement of the claim is expected to be a “lengthy process.”

Jan-Paul van Staalduinen, CIO of UU and director of Information and Technology Services (ITS), said: “It is easy to quantify the material damage, but there is also non-material damage that is difficult to express in euros. For example, students were left in uncertainty as to whether their exams would go ahead or not, and lecturers were under stress because they had to print out the exam papers at the last minute.”

In a separate interview with DUB, he added: “We were able to switch to our backups in the data center at UMC Utrecht. We practiced the switchover several times beforehand, but in practice, things turned out differently when the power to an entire data center goes out. We can learn from that.”

The three-story Almere facility offers 11MW across two buildings, totaling 26,000 sqm (279,860 sq ft). Customers of the facility included IBM Cloud, Utrecht University, the local water board, and Transdev.

Customers in Almere 2 have been reconnected to grid power. Currently running on temporary power, Almere 1 should be able to be connected to the grid by the end of June, and fully running on grid power again by the end of July.

Built in 2008 for KPN, Keppel has owned the site since 2013, currently through its Keppel DC REIT division. NorthC was formed in 2019 from the merger of several Dutch data center firms, including KPN’s data center business. Antin Infrastructure Partners acquired the company in December 2025 from DWS.