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Fire at the UofR



Dear calorimeterians:

This morning at approximately 11:30 local time, we had a fire in a
biochemistry lab down the hallway from our offices.  Yes, at the UofR,
labs with potentially dangerous chemicals and fire hazards are located
among faculty and staff offices!  We had to evacuate the building and as
I write this, 18:20 local time, the latest official information is that
the lab building is closed until further notice and decontamination
clean up is being performed.  So, unless they work overnight (yeah, fat
chance) and they send us a notice otherwise, we cannot have a video
conference tomorrow morning.  If we hear otherwise, we'll update you
all.

The environmental clean up is one thing, the main problem is possible
water damage.  We know that some (or all ?) of the sprinklers in the
wing of the building with the lab on fire, and that wing includes our
offices with our computers, went off resulting in water flooding at
certain areas of the building.  The Physics video conference room is
smack behind the flaming lab so it's almost certain that the sprinkler
in it went off as well.  If these are not serious enough problems,
flooding occurred also to the offices and labs on the floor below, and
our main GlueX lab is located on that floor.  Considering that at that
time we had PMT's, SiPM-array and DAQ systems powered on and taking
cosmic ray data, if water came down through the ceiling you can imagine
the damage we may have suffered! 

We hope that the sprinklers did not go off in our offices but in true
UofR fashion, what little information we gathered, while the firemen had
sealed off the building, was fragmented and unreliable.  Also, the GlueX
lab is fairly far away from the corner where the fire took place but
water has a nasty habit of flowing and following the grade and the path
of least resistance and it can travel far among ducts and ceiling tiles.
 So, in the best case scenario we have no damage to anything that
matters (GlueX members' offices and labs); the worst case scenario is
that we're dead in the water for quite some time until we figure what
data and/or equipment survived and proceed to replace as needed.

The good news is that we have not been hit by a meteor, yet.....

George

P.S.  We had to gather outside the building at -16 C and many had only
shirts on.  Freezing while Rome was burning, so to speak....