After living in the Pacific Northwest area (which is wonderful!), I find the article misleading. To quote the article "The fact that this is a region not prone to large-scale natural disasters like hurricanes is a bonus." - this is very misleading. I was there during the initial Mount Saint Helen's eruptions and we had a LOT of work we had to do to seal the buildings to keep the dirt and dust out of the computers and machinery.

While living there, I experienced earthquakes, and a number of other disruptive conditions.

There are a lot of good reasons to locate a data center in the Pacific Northwest, but lack of natural disasters is not one of them.