Fire Destroys Southampton Fibre-Optics Center

Sam Haine '95 writes "BBC News reports that a fire has burnt down a CS facility at the University of Southampton. It's notable because the facility was one of the best in the world." From the article: "Some of the most advanced research work in the country, and indeed the world was carried out in this facility ... We probably will have to start from scratch, and it will take a couple of years to rebuild the facility"

liquid nitrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

Francis Chee, a postgraduate student at the university, was at the scene of the fire. He said: "There are a lot of liquid nitrogen tanks outside the building and they use liquid nitrogen heavily there. I did hear several explosions sounding like gas canisters going off."

Obviously not a chem grad student... nitrogen would have helped put out the fire. Still, the exploding canisters act like rockets and prevent fire-fighters from getting close.

Re:Grammar error

[Bananatree3]

BBC just so happens to have a webform specifically for grammar errors. Instead of posting it on slashdot, simply submit the correction here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_395 0000/newsid_3955200/3955259.stm [bbc.co.uk]

University student information

[newandyh-r]

The information on the University's web site - URL not published because they definitely won't want to be slashdotted today - says:

Fire at Highfield campus A major fire today at the University's Highfield Campus has partially destroyed the Mountbatten Building, in particular the area containing the microfabrication facility. Very fortunately, as far as can be ascertained, no one was injured or is missing as a result of the fire. Apart from some minor smoke damage to adjacent buildings no other University buildings have been affected and staff and students are asked to return to work as normal on Monday morning. Undergraduate teaching at the University is expected to take place as usual on Monday and students should arrive for lectures at the normal time. Staff and postgraduate students who would normally work in the Mountbatten Building and those who work in the Zepler building are asked to attend a meeting at the Turner Sims Concert Hall at 10.30am, for a briefing on the latest situation and to hear about the University's contingency plans. The Mountbatten Building houses research laboratories and offices for the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). The University, ECS and the ORC will do all that is possible to support staff and students affected by this serious fire. The emergency services were alerted to the fire when the alarms were activated at 6.30am Sunday, and the fire was under control by mid-afternoon. Based on available information there was nothing in the smoke plume that would pose a significant risk to health beyond that of the normal constituents of any other building fire. The cause of the fire is not yet known. Local people were advised to avoid making unnecessary journeys in the vicinity and to avoid contact with the smoke plume. Those who are vulnerable or had an existing medical condition were asked to take particular care. The University's Secretary and Registrar John Lauwerys commented: 'This is a huge loss to the University and the fire has destroyed one of our key research facilities of international importance, supporting groups in both Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. 'It is a huge relief that no one has been injured as a result of the fire and our concern now is to ensure that staff and students that normally work in the Mountbatten Building are given every help to re-establish their academic work. 'The University is very appreciative of the professionalism and skill of all the emergency services, who responded so quickly and effectively, preventing the fire spreading to adjacent buildings. 'It is not yet safe to enter the Mountbatten Building, so we do not yet know the extent of the loss in terms of people's research material. It is likely to be a few days before this can be fully established,' he added.

[ooops - I had hoped "blockquote" would keep the formatting intact ... haven't got time to format cleanly]

Re:OK people

[igb]

But fire supression isn't as easy as you make out. In the machine hall I manage I have the usual underfloor, main space and ceiling void vesda early detection, plus automated dumping of extinguishant. However, as Halon has been illegal for new construction in the EU since the early 90s, it's CO2. So there's a motion sensor system to avoid killing people inside.

But the whole idea of machine rooms as dangerous fire sources dates back to valves, three-phase and lots of paper dust. Mine is in the middle of a mixed office/manufacturing complex, and it's far mkore likely that a fire would start outside the room and burn in than vice versa. Once the pressure boundary of the machine room is breached gaseous extinguishant is useless.

I've kept the CO2 system, but our safety people are close to arguing that our chances of killing people by accident are greater than the chances of improved fire safety. Far better to spend money and resource on fire prevention.

The Ardman example (and a few years ago the fire than hit that art warehouse) are also hard, because large, open storage areas are impossible to pressurise and water would be almost as destructive as fire.

In practice, IT operations are less likely to burn and more likely to be backed up than other parts of businesses. Look instead at paper financial records, at test fixtures in factories, at lab areas in development operations, at patch frames (you know where every patch in your 1000-employee building goes, right?)

ian

Formatting

[TubeSteak]

sometimes slashdot likes to pretend you're formatting in html.
You need to make sure that little drop down menu says "Plain Old Text"
That's the only way /. will leave your paragraph's intact. Otherwise you have to insert markup

Fire at Highfield campus
A major fire today at the University's Highfield Campus has partially destroyed the Mountbatten Building, in particular the area containing the microfabrication facility. Very fortunately, as far as can be ascertained, no one was injured or is missing as a result of the fire.

Apart from some minor smoke damage to adjacent buildings no other University buildings have been affected and staff and students are asked to return to work as normal on Monday morning.

Undergraduate teaching at the University is expected to take place as usual on Monday and students should arrive for lectures at the normal time.

Staff and postgraduate students who would normally work in the Mountbatten Building and those who work in the Zepler building are asked to attend a meeting at the Turner Sims Concert Hall at 10.30am, for a briefing on the latest situation and to hear about the University's contingency plans.

The Mountbatten Building houses research laboratories and offices for the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). The University, ECS and the ORC will do all that is possible to support staff and students affected by this serious fire.

The emergency services were alerted to the fire when the alarms were activated at 6.30am Sunday, and the fire was under control by mid-afternoon. Based on available information there was nothing in the smoke plume that would pose a significant risk to health beyond that of the normal constituents of any other building fire. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Local people were advised to avoid making unnecessary journeys in the vicinity and to avoid contact with the smoke plume. Those who are vulnerable or had an existing medical condition were asked to take particular care.

The University's Secretary and Registrar John Lauwerys commented: 'This is a huge loss to the University and the fire has destroyed one of our key research facilities of international importance, supporting groups in both Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

'It is a huge relief that no one has been injured as a result of the fire and our concern now is to ensure that staff and students that normally work in the Mountbatten Building are given every help to re-establish their academic work.

'The University is very appreciative of the professionalism and skill of all the emergency services, who responded so quickly and effectively, preventing the fire spreading to adjacent buildings.

'It is not yet safe to enter the Mountbatten Building, so we do not yet know the extent of the loss in terms of people's research material. It is likely to be a few days before this can be fully established,' he added.

Coralized Link To Article [nyud.net]

Re:OK people

[TheGSRGuy]

Halon systems generally give a certain amount of warning before going off. The server rooms where I work have Halon fire supression systems, and there are placards and lights/buzzers everywhere that tell you "you've got 60 seconds to exit the room once this light turns on." The same warnings are found in fireworks stores, and I would presume factories.

It's not like suddenly the oxygen in the room disappears and everyone asphyxiates. Halons are basically a super-powerful CFC. They destroy ozone (hence removing oxygen from the air, which sucks if you rely on oxygen, like humans).

There are alternatives to halons, as discussed here: http://www.harc.org/harcnews.html [harc.org].

CS dept fine, ES dept not

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a correction on the news item: the actual CS department was unharmed, and CS students are unlikely to be directly affected at all. According to an interview with the admin Chris Gutteridge on Surge FM (Coral) [nyud.net] (the Uni radio), all students files and documents are safe and were backed up. The internal intranet and internet connectivity is still up, although a couple of servers have been cut off. It is electronics students and researchers who have lost out here.

For those that aren't aware, Soton has a combined electronics and computer science facility. Electronics in Mountbatten, and CS in the attached Zepler building. Only Mountbatten was affected, and Zepler recieved only minor smoke and heat damage. This is remarkable as Mountbatten has been entirely gutted due to the explosions, whereas Zepler appears to be otherwise perfectly fine.

Mountbatten did have a modern sprinkler system, quite why it failed and why the fire escalated will be investigate in the next few days. There are also concerns over the lack of information about chemicals stored there, which prevented fire crews from stopping the fire earlier.

Re:Chip Fab

[hptux06]

Yep, the Mountbatten building houses most of the electronic / microchip facilities for southampton. According to my brother (a student there), the fire's taken out the Clean Room [intel.com], used for chip fab. Seeing how the cost for building clean rooms start in the millions, that's gotta hurt.

Re:liquid nitrogen

[Nasarius]

Obviously not a chem grad student... nitrogen would have helped put out the fire. Still, the exploding canisters act like rockets and prevent fire-fighters from getting close.

As a chem student, damaging/heating a canister of compressed nitrogen can cause a fairly violent explosion. It's not combustion; it's just rapid expansion.

Re:Halon doesn't work by displacing oxygen

[bogd]

Most pages I've found that talk about halon only mention that it "displaces oxygen". However, I also found this page [sciam.com], that seems to have a different opinion: "The trick is that the bromine and chlorine atoms in the halon molecule--the very ones that are so damaging to the stratospheric ozone--are also incredibly aggressive scavengers of hydrogen atoms, which are key to maintaining a combustion chain reaction. Indeed, bromine and chlorine atoms are released as halons decompose in the heat of the fire, establishing a catalytic cycle involving HBr and HCl; the cycle converts active hydrogen atoms to stable H2 molecules, breaking the chain reaction."

Also, the reason why halon was discontinued is not related to people getting trapped and dying (if I understood correctly, halon should be efficient at very low concentrations). The problem was that it damages the ozone layer. (taken from the same page [sciam.com]: "By international agreement, however, production of all types of halons ceased in 1994 because the bromine and chlorine atoms in the chemical were found to migrate over time to the stratosphere, where they react to deplete ozone in a very efficient catalytic cycle.")