Reported by The Guardian
As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out
S andu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”
The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.
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Once in the voltage room, Sandu says the managers confirmed the lines had been de-energised. In the first round, everything went as planned. Then, on the second test, while holding insulated tongs, he linked the cables. But this time, the lines were live.
The blast was immediate and catastrophic. In milliseconds, 400 volts and 12,000 amps hit Sandu’s face and across the right side of his body. “I went completely blind,” he says. When doctors received him in the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi, he says he was placed in an induced coma for five days.
Hospital records seen by the Guardian and Investigate Europe show that the arc flash electrocution had burned 12% of Sandu’s body, with second-degree burns to the face and neck, as well as third-degree burns across his right shoulder and fingers.
When Sandu woke from surgery in the intensive care unit a week later, his wife was at his bedside. He says his entire body felt like a “white-hot blister … It was so much pain. The human heart cannot comprehend it.”
Sandu says the regional director of Google, along with a representative from Dornan Engineering, an Irish company that oversaw…