[Bobblehead]

The problem with multiple site redundancy is it gets very complex and that means expensive.

Especially with things like health care and municipal services - how much more are people willing to pay in order to be able to withstand a rare disaster? And when there may be little to no other observable benefit it can be a tough sell - "You want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on the off chance something might happen?"
Outside of 911, it sounds like most of the other things affected are non-critical. A PITA that they aren't available, but still nothing that people can't live without for a couple days.

As for sprinkler systems - sure it would be great if every building planned for a better solution. But look how fast tech has taken over and how much power you can get now; a lot of buildings were built without any concept of data centres like this and even retro-fitting is a costly, might never need it, endeavour. Then you get the whole, it just started with one computer so we didn't worry about it and without noticing it grew into the mass it is today.

If the data centre in question is planned to be relocated (is that the construction off Barlow/32nd beside their other huge building?) then they got really unlucky - it had lasted this long - or they pushed their luck a bit too far.