Re: Fire at the UofR

["Curtis A. Meyer" <cmeyer@ernest.phys.cmu.edu>]

Dear Goerge -

   I am at least pleased to hear that you are all safe (well perhaps 
some frost bite). We will all hope for the best with you lab space.


   I would note that it sounds like your fire alarm worked. We had a
situation at CMU about eight years ago where we had a roof fire. 
Unfortunately, the fire alarm system could not be heard in most of
the building because (1) I clanked at about 0.1 Hz while tapping out
some sort of Morse code on  a paper tape so the firemen would know
where the fire was. It then shut off after 15 seconds so as not to waste
paper tape. Fortunately we were all assured by the phsyical plant people
that this was "up to code" so we had to be safe and "it was too expensive
to replace" so we must be safe.

    cheers -- Curtis 

On Thu December 13 2007, George Lolos wrote:
> 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....
> 



-- 
Professor Curtis A. Meyer        Department of Physics
Phone:  (412) 268-2745          Carnegie Mellon University
Fax:    (412) 681-0648            Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
cmeyer@ernest.phys.cmu.edu  http://www.curtismeyer.com/