Unfortunately, this last AWS problem affected multiple AZs in the us-east region. The OP very well may have had an alternate AZ failover plan, but like Quora, Sencha, Reddit, FourSquare and Heroku, they probably kept it region specific.
As for backing up to multiple regions, I can imagine them thinking that sending everything over the public internet as being a bad idea. However, not having a multi-region/multi-provider failover plan was a worse one.
As for backing up to multiple regions, I can imagine them thinking that sending everything over the public internet as being a bad idea. However, not having a multi-region/multi-provider failover plan was a worse one.