Is this saying it was "hours away" and safe or "hours away" and nearly missed a disaster? I assume the latter.

Presumably they've learned from that experience.

Wild! Source?

I know of one DC that does government hosting so that they get prioritized to keep the lights on.

It would be helpful for readers to know what Equinix is

> Equinix's infrastructure supports the digital services businesses rely on, from cloud computing and enterprise applications to content delivery and financial trading platforms.

An exchange having to stop trading and gracefully shut down their systems for a few days doesn't really strike me as a disaster though.