I don't know how big Cloudflare's management layer is, but I'm assuming it's relatively small (maybe dozens of racks at most), hosted in some sort of datacenter

I don't know how big Cloudflare's management layer is, but I'm assuming it's relatively small (maybe dozens of racks at most), hosted in some sort of datacenter (Equinix, Digital Realty, Coresite, etc) that provides the remote hands. Maybe some piece of core network equipment. A small colo may have a single pair of routers, switches, or firewalls at its edge. If one had failed for some reason, and the remote hands removed the wrong one, it is possible you could knock the entire colo offline. There's a bunch of other possible components: Storage platforms, power, maybe something like an HSM storing secrets, or even just a key database server. Their failover to their backup facility may be impaired by the fact that well, their management plane is down. They probably rely on their own services. Avoiding chicken-and-egg issues can require careful ahead-of-time planning.