Hurricane Sandy Attacks The Web: Gawker, BuzzFeed and Huffington Post Are Down (UPDATE: They Are Back)

UPDATE: Everything appears to be back up, here's a statement from BuzzFeed explaining the situation:

Major Media ISP Goes Down

Datagram, the ISP whose Manhattan servers host BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Gawker, and other sites, has lost power, an official there told us via text this evening.

"Basement flooded, fuel pump off line – we got people working on it now. 5 feet of water now," the official wrote.

BuzzFeed's site and story page are back online, thanks to a Content Delivery Network, Akamai, which hosts the content at servers distributed around the world.

If Hurricane Sandy wasn't scary enough, it's newest victims are in the blogosphere. We've just learned that Gawker's fleet of sites, including Gizmodo are down. Also Hurricane Sandy victims? The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.

As you know, New Jersey and New York City is in the storm's path, and any data centers that are stationed there are surely going to be affected. Big data warehouses usually have multiple failsafe systems in place, but it looks like they were no match for the fury that Hurricane Sandy brings.

We'll be back soon! There was a data center battery failure after the power went down in Lower Manhattan. Generators powering up. #sandy

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  (@Gizmodo) October 29, 2012

Gawker is temporarily down because the 57th Street Crane just flooded our servers with sea foam, or something. Back with you shortly.

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  (@Gawker) October 29, 2012

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." -Willa Cather

—
Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) October 29, 2012

Few big data centers in NJ.... RT @michaelroston: So HuffPost and Gawker both having connectivity problems. Anyone else?

—
Megan McCarthy (@Megan) October 29, 2012

Our site is down. Problems with NY-area servers due to Sandy. Be back ASAP.

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  (@BuzzFeed) October 29, 2012

Earlier, we reported that FEMA has told residents in the path of the storm to use text messaging and social networks to communicate with family members and friends, as to keep phone lines open. A bigger deal than that? The NYSE and NASDAQ closed down for the day as well.

The Huffington Post has been serving up important resources and links for those affected by the storms, and BuzzFeed has brought us a few laughs to keep us loose. It's sad to see both sites down. Luckily, Twitter itself posted some great accounts to follow to get updates about the weather.

A BuzzFeed spokeswoman, Ashley McCollum, issued this statement to us:

We're having hurricane related issues both with our servers and our CDN, and are working on it. The social web is alive and well and our staff will continue to create shareable content for Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

As stated, the show must go on and BuzzFeed is keeping the LOLZ coming:

Pushing out stuff through Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr while we resolve our site issues, you guys! Follow and like us.

—
  (@BuzzFeed) October 30, 2012

We've reached out to the rest of sites who are affected for comment and we'll let you know once we hear back. Good luck, folks! :/ This really doesn't look pretty:

BuzzFeed creeping back, but we'll be posting great new stuff here, buzzfeed.tumblr.com & facebook.com/buzzfeed all night.

—
  (@BuzzFeed) October 30, 2012

UPDATE: We've learned from a source that a NYC datacenter was lost because of a power outage, and its failover to Newark was unsuccessful. Servers are rebooting and the situation is being worked on.

[photo credit: flickr]

• HUFFINGTON POST
• GAWKER MEDIA
• BUZZFEED

The Huffington Post is a leading online news source founded by Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. Contributors include more than 3,000 bloggersâ€"from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy expertsâ€"who contribute in real-time on a wide-range of topics. The site started as a politics blog, but now covers more than 20 categories, including media, business, entertainment, living, style, sustainable “green” living, world news, technology, nonprofits, college life, and comedy. It began launching local versions...

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Gawker Media, LLC is an online media company. The company was founded in 2002 and is based in New York, New York.

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BuzzFeed is a leading social news organization, intensely focused on delivering high-quality original reporting, insight, and viral content across a rapidly expanding array of subject areas. Our technology powers the social distribution of content, detects what is trending on the web, and connects people in realtime with the hottest content of the moment. Our site is rapidly growing and reaches more than 20 million monthly unique visitors. Jonah Peretti, founder & CEO of BuzzFeed, previously co-founded the Huffington Post....

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