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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"
I'm only speculating, but I hope for their sake they have all of their data backed up and off-site. How ironic would it be for a company steeped in high speed communications technology ostensibly with the capability to set up their own redundant high-speed SAN to lose data and research in the fire? I'm hoping they didn't, but wonder if they did, considering their projection of a couple years to recover, and also having to start from scratch. Does that mean for the research?, or the building only?
This sounds like the work of a disgruntled CS student turned MBA. After all, how better to learn about screwing your former classmates than burning down their building (unless you made sure they were inside it at the time) :P
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Time to take about backups.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
Quote article:
He said: "There are a lot of liquid nitrogen tanks outside the building and they use liquid nitrogen heavily there.
Since when is liquid nitrogen flamable?
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.
Is that where they were working on lucas electrics? If so, it's no great loss.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
The only two things that I can think of that might be of some consolation are that because this dealt with technology much of the research should be in electronic form and backed up and that many times you'll discover a more efficient way of doing things when you go back and design the same thing a second time (although one normally does not have the luxury/misfortune to do so).
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
What about the building's fire sprinkler system? Why did it fail? Or why didn't it have one?
(one of) the world's most advanced cs research center does not have most advanced fire containment/prevention system? wtf?
It's amazing how much fire can destroy and how fast. Even with advanced fire suppression systems, fire departments, etc. Without any of these, fire can be even more devastating. I was talking with a guy who said they don't have a fire department in his area, and that when there is a remote fire department responding, it's too little to late. Fires in his area take out acres and acres of land and homes. It's impossible to get insurance in the area. I joined my local volunteer fire department about a year and a half ago, and I never realized until then just how frequent fires are, and how easily they can get out of control. The biggest thing is to prepare for the worst and pray for the best.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Makes sense.
...I'm specifically thinking about the one that took out the Debian servers last year. (Too tired to find a link...sorry.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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
First Google buys all unused fiber optics:/ 28/2156233&tid=217&tid=230&tid=193
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08
To corner the market.
And now mysterious fires ravage the competition.
When cold stuff gets hot it expands! Expansion in an enclosed space leads to explosions when the container eventually fails.
I think that after two examples (the other being the Ardman fire) of why you should invest in proper fire suppression equipment in one month's time in one nation should be enough to make people realize that such systems are a worthwhile investment.
Then again, such things are usually put low on the list of priorities whenever possible, because "it won't happen to us".
You can even get the upper hand when explosives are present, you can get systems that will have fire suppressants leaving the discharge head before the explosion is even visible (some systems are guaranteed to have the suppressant flowing in less than 50 milliseconds of onset of the event that triggers the release.)
I suppose it just comes down to a matter of deciding how much you value your operation and assets.
Hmm, not knowing that liquid nitrogen becomes gaseous nitrogen when you apply heat, and that very high pressure makes containers explode...? And after you've mocked someone else...? Even more priceless!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
An explosion does not require a fire. When heated, a liquid nitrogen tank will explode when the pressure from the expanding nitrogen exceeds the pressure rating of the tank.
B.
...what all these researchers are going to do now that they're out of work? Maybe Google should hire them! They seem to hire all of the geniuses in the world anyway.
Having worked with liquid nitrogen in the past, I don't really like the thought of what would happen if the liquid was quickly heated up. The tanks are vented, but I really doubt the vents would be able to deal with that. Sure, the gas itself is not going to burn and might even snuff out a few neighboring fires (though the oxygen will come back fairly quickly and the fires might revive), but it's the large and very jagged flying pieces of metal that could, shall we say, greatly inconvenience anyone in the vicinity.
It's certainly not an experiment I'd want to participate in.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If you're talking about this, it was much more than a year ago (November 2002). So no, I don't think it's as common as you suggest.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
So a gas is compressed at a certain temperature and pressure in a container. The pressure goes up when the temperature rises (you know ... PV=nRT and all that good stuff). So the container will have tolerances built in to account for changes in temperature.
My guess is those tolerances didn't account for the canisters being subjected to a 100 foot tall plume of flame and smoke. Hence the canisters went kaboom.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
NL2 expands when heated. The tanks have pressure release valves but I doubt they would be able to vent enough to prevent a rupture in a fire. Hence, exploding canisters.
You smugly criticize the BBC as being "scientifically ignorant", yet you expose your own bottomless pit of ignorance yourself for the whole world to see. Oh the irony...
yeah it can explode. Its time people understood that explode does not necessarily = explode (thank heavens for moronic kids who produce endlessly amusing videos like these, what would we do without them?).
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Combined, you're looking at an easy 5 years lost research time best case scenario. Worst case scenario you're looking at anywhere between 10~30 years lost time since some scientists may not want to wait for the facilities to be rebuilt and just take their expertise elsewhere and their not the sort you can replace easily. Theres always the distant (but unlikely) possibility, that they might not even rebuild the facilties and simply shelf or sell off the data to others.
And of course, this doesn't even touch the financial costs, the damage to the school's prestige and damage to the school's pride.
... a RAID array does not count as an off-site backup!
A massive fire has destroyed a leading computer science research facility.... They should've invested in a better firewall...
Sounds more like it was a chip fab. One of the chemicals that might be used in the wet benches can be pyrophoric (ignite contact with air, with no other ignition source). The gas called silane.
The ducts used to pull silane out of the wet benches are usually heavily fire rated. Silane is used to deposit silicon layers on chips. I know that other wet benches have burned up in the past due to silane as an ignition souce. Generally it is heaviliy cut with Nitrogen (98% Nitrogen, 2% Silane) since the silane is so reactive.
I'm sure we have some people on these groups that know more than I do.
Holy crap people, how many "OMG didn't you like totally know that pressure and temperature are directly related in gasses and that LN2 can like BOIL an' junk!!? Like wow ur so 14m3!".
DUH!! Wow, congrats to you, you remembered something from high school chemistry. Why do I picture you patting yourself on the back right now? The point is that an exploding container of liquid nitrogen will NOT create a fire! Which is what the the BBC article implies.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
How the fuck is that off topic? It's about the article that the summary is talking about! Dumbasses.
There's also the question of cannisters exploding... Cannisters generally don't do this - they tend to be rather boring, not even speaking much, unless there's something already happening. Cannisters will react to heat - but, like I said, a halon system should have dealt with heat sources long before they became a threat. Cannisters with explosive gasses CAN explode if the valve is leaky and there is a static discharge. But anyone leaving highly explosive substances around massive sources of static, or indeed, in containers that are faulty - well, they should expect something like this. You should generally store cannisters and gas cylinders in well-ventillated but secure locations containing no combustible materials or materials likely to pick up a static charge.
In practice, you can't go around stowing every single piece of equiptment in absolutely ideal conditions. In consequence, accidents like this are going to happen. Because they are going to happen, the important thing is to keep the impact to a minimum. A lot of effort over the years has gone, not only in building fire suppressing systems, but also in figuring out how to build structures that will contain a fire. The slower a fire can spread, the more likely it is to exhaust fuel and/or oxygen before it can find more.
Now, explosions get more problematic. Once you get explosions, there's not a whole lot even the best design can do, because you have to assume that there will be a sizable area affected. Aside from minimizing risk (through correct handling and operating procedurea) and trapping precursors (such as nearby fires, static, etc), there's not much that can be done. If you want to have a building survive explosions, you've got to design it very differently - lots of honeycombed structures that can absorb the high energies involved, for example. On the whole, though, you wouldn't design a fibre optics centre that way. Fibre isn't known for exploding. Fireworks factories SHOULD be built that way, and a lot of people killed in such explosions might well be alive if such buildings WERE built correctly for the conditions, but that's a whole different ball-game.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
PV=nRT is an extremely rough approximation for gases, but it simply does not apply to _liquid_ nitrogen. When you heat up liquid nitrogen, it boils and expands a LOT. No container would be able to contain such pressures.
that could supposedly transfer porn at 1TB/sec, felt they needed to get rid of any "potential" competition ala 80s style :D
Arash
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Where does the BBC article imply that the nitrogen caused the fire? The only sentence on the cause of the fire was, "Police forensics officers and fire investigators have started to look for the cause of the fire which, at this stage, is not thought to be suspicious." The exploding gas cannisters are only mentioned for drawing the attention of locals -- not as the cause of the fire. Perhaps you're the one who shouldn't be patting your back.
He's a friend in postgrad studies at Soton doing CS (well...software agents but stick with me). *AND* he was studying with me in Edinburgh when fire gutted on of the Informatics buildings there. Plus, he's Irish. So. You know....
Those bangs were more likely to be CRTs imploding.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
You know, I thought of that as soon as I hit the submit button. Right. Thanks for the correction.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
nowhere in the article does it imply the explosions or LN2 caused the fire. rather it implies the explosions were a result of the fire.
You need to make sure that little drop down menu says "Plain Old Text"
That's the only way
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I rather doubt the entire nation has only one of these facilities. They may have only one with this degree of capability, but chip and optic fabs are a little more common than that, even if they are expensive overall.
Now that's what I call firewire!
"Hmm, not knowing that liquid nitrogen is completely non-flamable and ~200 degrees below zero...?"
What happens to one of those tanks when you heat it rapidly?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What happens to one of those tanks when you heat it rapidly?
This. Actually, that was just a pop bottle full. A proper tank full would be much more dramatic.
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) (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.
Well i don't know much about fibre optics but i do know that when those places burn they really stink.. And i live about 8 miles away.
There was indeed a Chip fabrication facility on-site, and numerous other chemicals other than Liquid nitrogen. But the BBC heard the words "Liquid Nitrogen" and went off on one it seems.
Odd that the Mountbatten Building was destroyed by an explosion and fire, it is a sadly ironic reminder of how Louis Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb.
I'm an alumnus of Southampton Uni - I graduated 10 years ago and revisit the city (and sometimes the campus) once or twice a year. I had a few lectures in that building, but mostly I was in Maths on the other side of the campus.
:-/ /me keeps an eye out for photoblogs
The building in question is in a very tightly-packed part of the campus, and if memory serves is probably only about 200yds from the neighbouring houses (Hartley Road etc). So it sounds like it could have easily been a lot worse.
On the plus side, the campus is on top of the edge of the river valley, so the whole of the nearby Itchen valley would have been treated to an early fireworks display
In the best case scenario, their computer systems are redundant. There are facilities one can hire as a bank, broker, etc. to get you up and running in no time after disaster like fire, earthquake etc. strikes. The work done in this facility is qualified as the best of the world, made possible by tax payers money. Normally I'd expect them to have obtained a service like this, but this is very costly stuff... For a bank it's easy maths, each hour they are down cost zillions and after a few days you're out, end of story. They get this service because it's mission-critical. For scientists, it might have been more appealing to throw it all away on cool experiments, which might cause a fire, but at this level?
If it did, you could use something a lot cheaper like CO2. 1301 halts fires when it's at only 3 to 7% concentration, barely diluting the oxygen let alone displacing it.
What happens is much more interesting and I've never found a good reference with a complete explanation. Under heat, loose halogen atoms break off the halon molecules and react with short-lived intermediate molecules from the combustion process, taking them out of circulation and breaking the reaction chain.
I looked into this once trying to figure out if the chemistry is related to that behind ozone depletion, but never found out.
... when many companies had their "offsite" backups in the other tower...
As a fairly recent (2002) ECS Alumnus, I used to spend a lot of time in that building and some of the research going on there was truly cutting edge.
From what I heard in the reports, the main casualties are the clean rooms housing the chip fabs and the fibre drawing towers. The building also housed dozens of PhD students and roughly the same number of research staff.
Having seen inside a lot of these offices, I can vouch for the fact that a lot of this research was paper-based and will be very difficult to replace short-term. However, my first concern was the many worrying chemicals used in the IC fabrication (arsenic, boron, arsine, silane, hydrogen peroxide, hydrofluoric acid etc..)
A lot of people are going to have to spend a lot of time getting this facility back up to speed. It's an enormous loss to World Research.
(by the way, it's melted-down my ECS email forwarding address as well, so I've got fun and games currently!)
I studied at Southampton Uni a few years ago. Two years into my course the whole campus basically turned into a building site. By the time I'd left it looked completely different - dozens of magnificent and expensive new building had popped up all over the place.
I heard at the time that they'd got the money to do all this by virtue of having developed the most advanced optical fibre in the world.
Argh.
The scientists at Southhampton were saddend by news of the Japenese doing a dvd in 0.5seconds, the best they had managed was in 4 seconds. So, late at night, confident that they could better it if they just increased the voltage a bit (they use overclockers.com for tips) they tried. It got hot, but lo! Wasn't there some liquid nitrogen around? But they still couldn't beat the Japense, so up the voltage went again. And then Bob, the youngest scientist used the jug of Liquid nitrogen to cool his beer, and before someone could refill it from the vat in the next room, a situation developed. But, before the fire, they did manage to beat the Japs, only the evidence is now toast. Truth.
I'm an undergraduate student at Southampton University studying electronic engineering. From what I have heard so far, it started in the chip-fab area and spread to the joined Mountbatten building. Amazingly, the uni seems quite confident that the UG students will be unaffected - even though (I'm guessing) that half the lecturer's offices will be gone.
./ proof services - hence why I'm not providing you with URLs (Sorry!!).
I think that everyone is really grateful to the emergency services for their hard work putting out the fire. From what we can gather, they were able to save the Zepler building - although the Mountbatten building was burnt to a crisp - pictures on the net show just a metal "shell" left over. Most of these pics are not hosted on
I think that everybodies sympathy should definately be with the Staff and Postgrad's. I know of some Postgrads who were months away from completing their PhD.
...like the 'clean room' building (nicknamed the lego block while I was there) is what's gone. Difficult to tell from the photos, but I think Mountbatten building housed the clean room stuff, and it was certainly an experimental fabrication area, whether for chips or fibre I wouldn't know.
Justin.
(So'ton grad class of '93).
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
If you google "southampton university fire", you will see amongst other things, adverts for a Fire Safety Officer!!
b view.jsp?function=View&id=05B0046
From http://www.jobs.soton.ac.uk/adminweb/jsp/jobs/sJo
"Following a review of its provision of fire safety services, the University of Southampton has established a post of Fire Safety Adviser. This is a significant role in one of the UK's most successful Universities. With in excess of 100 major buildings, and a range of work from laboratories and workshops through to offices and teaching spaces, the post will provide a stimulating and varied challenge.
The successful applicant will be involved in all aspects of fire safety including fire risk assessments, developing associated compliance strategies and policies, and delivering training. Considerable knowledge and experience in the practical application of fire precautions legislation and standards is essential. You are likely to have held a similar position in a large organisation, or will have extensive experience of advising on meeting the requirements of the Building Regulations, or will have undertaken the role of Fire Safety Officer with a Fire and Rescue Service. Candidates who possess membership of the Institute of Fire Engineering and/or hold Fire Service Modules A - E will be at an advantage. Good interpersonal and communication skills are essential, and additional training in the role will be provided as required. You must be able to travel off site to provide services to all parts of the University.
University benefits include pleasant working environment, generous annual leave and pension scheme, sport and social activities.
Salary in the range of £22,774 - £28,007 per annum"
Frickin' lasers! Seriously, though, this is a great shame and has also affected servers hosted by the MailScanner Team - there's a news item on the front page of their site about the fire.
AT&ROFLMAO
Southampton University has a handful of campuses, the largest being the Highfield Campus at the north-east end of the Common, towards the outskirts of the city (the others are the Avenue Campus, Oceanography Research Centre, New College, Winchester School of Art and Chilworth Science Park). The Highfield Campus map is here: http://www.soton.ac.uk/about/campusmaps/highfieldm ap.html. The burnt-out building is building 53 just north of Salisbury Road in Square C1. At present there is reduced access to the cluster of buildings immediately south of Salisbury Road.
however the ecs (electronics and computer systems) website http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ is down
looks like they kept their backup servers in the same building (doh!)
I guess being tired does funny things to you. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mostly, I guess, because I've run Debian all this time..
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
... which one of you guys left the laser on?
Bruce
I used to stick sealed borosilicate tubes full of water in a bunsen flame as part of a pyrotechnics demonstration lecture. They needed a 1 inch thick polycarbonate blast shield to stay safe as they would fling sharp bits of glass dozens of yards when they went off - water is also non flammable but apply heat to any enclosed vessel and it eventually ruptures.
As Southampton University is in the UK, it should be the Fibre Optic Centre!
A friend of mine was there some years ago and had difficulty finding a research project that wasn't military-applications.
Think James Bond 'Q' stuff; it happens in uni's like this.
Might set them back a little...
"There are a lot of liquid nitrogen tanks outside the building and they use liquid nitrogen heavily there.
A man working in the lab fled the scene when he saw a man in a Los Angeles police uniform chasing a huge bodybuilder-type wearing sunglasses, a woman with an assault rifle, and whining teenage boy. Police are still searching the site for clues, but LAPD does not have any officers operating in England.
Best Free Utilities for Windows
if Edinburgh's anything to go by. South Bridge facilities burned down in 2002, the new Informatics Forum will apparently be online by 2007/2008ish.
:|
And it's that fire I've got to thank for having to study out here in the boonies instead of where everyone else is near George Square
We have a flood to deal with:
"On Saturday afternoon a three-inch pressure water pipe burst under the Lecture Centre. This resulted in six feet of water collecting in the Plant Room, and the power being shut down for three nearby buildings.
Pumping the water out started on Saturday night and was completed by late Sunday. The area has now to be dried out before power can be restored - this process started on Sunday night. The Power Company are due back on site at noon today to see if the system is dry enough to commence testing (which takes several hours).
All of the above means that our Central Lecture building is closed today. Two other buildings are open under temporary power. This will be withdrawn when the Power Company start testing. It is hoped that the necessary testing and powering up can take place so that all buildings return to normal tomorrow (Tuesday) morning."
Computer Centre staff came in at the weekend and despite the unplanned power loss, all IT services were running by Monday morning.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
imdb
Milton Waddams: [talking on the phone] And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
There are some photos taken this morning on flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krp/sets/1255449/
This is (uh, was) a multi-million dollar (OK, multi-million pound, sorry) facility.
Where was all of the fire-suppression equipment?
Why was the builing itself so flammable?
I can understand using wood in lower-cost construction (e.g., residential homes), but such a valuable facility should have been constructed out of concrete and steel.
In addition, it should have had many or all of the following characteristics:
- No wood in/on the walls, and no paper-coated drywall.
- Steel doors.
- No wooden floors (just tile and such).
- No wooden furniture (e.g., only steel desks, etc.).
- Flame-resistant paint.
- Flame-resistant fabric, where fabric is necessary (on chairs, curtains, etc.).
- Steel bookcases with doors of steel or tempered glass.
- Steel cases (instead of plastic) and aluminum (OK, aluminium, sorry) knobs on the scientific equipment, and sealed electronics wherever possible.
- Copper/steel/cast iron pipes, instead of PVC.
- Flame-resistant coatings on all wiring, etc.
- Dangerous experiments (e.g., those requiring explosive chemicals) conducted in outbuildings.
- And, most importantly, a working, effective, and periodically tested fire-suppression system.
This is all very expensive, and is probably not cost-effective in most situations.However, since the "facility was one of the best in the world", and "Some of the most advanced research work in the country, and indeed the world was carried out in this facility", I think that the added expense would have been worth it.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Ok, they are strapped for cash... So they can afford a multi-million dollar fiber data storage and computing facility, but they can't spend a couple of grand to protect those millions of investment? I'm sorry, but if you have a world class data center, you can afford to get a decent fire suppression system.
Bullish Machine Tzar
> BBC News reports that a fire has burnt down a CS
> facility at the University of Southampton
God no! All that pr0n and mp3's!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm a physics student at Southampton, I had a look at the damage today, one whole side of the building was blown out and there was significant damage to the Zepler comp sci building next door.
A little less obvious but coupled with the obvious, is that liquid nitrogen can become a very dangerous fire hazzard if it is allowed to dissolve oxygen somehow.
Granted it is limited in scope to cannisters of LN that are open to the air. But consider how a lorry driver happened to poison half of Cornwall by polluting the county's fresh water supply a few years ago.....
The United Kingdom is not bereft of idiots in high places. Just because a certain nation houses all theirs in some quasi Roman edifice, so that the general public can keep an eye on them.......
I'm sure Kent was messing with the optics again....
They've got the website back up on ISS's servers - I believe the reason why the sites are out is, although the servers are fine, running in Zepler, the connectivity ran through Mountbatten so got cut off from the outside world.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
This has updates and a few more photos.
And I apllied to study there because of their chip fab plant.
The building was of steel-frame construction with aluminium cladding. If you were to look at any of the photographs, this is quite clear, since the structure is visible. The building contained substantial amounts of flammable chemicals used in the fabrication processes carried out there, which had much to do with the intensity of the fire.
The people who designed and ran this facility were not fools, as you seem to be suggesting. Get a clue.
The explosion was believed to have been caused by a gas leak. If you think about what kinds of dangerous and obnoxious chemicals they were using in there, you can understand why, despite being a pretty well-designed building, it still went up.
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl newbie\n";'
You only get an automatic pass if someone in the same class as you dies, and that's only in America. At older British Universities, you are however allowed to ask for a pint of beer and a pork pie during exams.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In fact, as a matter of point, the building was almost certainly designed so that in the unfortunate case of fire, it would burn safely and cause minimal damage to surrounding buildings, hence the lightweight walls. The chemistry department buildings are also built with this in mind.
The same is true of the jet propulsion industry, their test buildings are built as concertinas so that they collapse inward should anything untoward happen.
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl newbie\n";'
Given my experience in one, the probability that they had
effective off-site backup procedures is almost nil.
Many places, like mine, have no system administrator either or
centralized policy. It usually falls down to whatever random
grad students or postdocs happen to know a little bit more than
the others.
People hook up their own computers fairly randomly. Lots of people
know root passwords.
The reason is obvious: no money.
It is difficult enough to get grants to pay for science researchers
themselves. Given the high overhead rates (which never comes back
as professional system administration) nobody bothers because it
is directly taking away money from themselves.
Researchers on soft money are often unemployed (in the financial sense, but not in the time sense) a significant fraction of the time.
Take away whatever crumbs for system administration? Off-site backup?
A couple of extra CD-R's people burn would be impressive as a backup policy.
I predict: whatever computer data remains will be so because people were lucky enough to have it on their laptops they took home. And the rest is sitting in Gmail.
In this case, however, the main losses will be to equipment and optical experiments which take a long amount of time to set up and calibrate. The computer software and data is not significant by comparison.
But I have a lab full of optics equipment that's taken several people years to assemble and align. Hell, even someone going in and knocking every single component in the lab out of alignment would probably take several months to rectify.
If a substantial amount of fire damage was caused to my equipment, I'd be extremely lucky to graduate anything remotely close to on time, if at all. If there were a fire threatening the lab, and I were around, I'd prbably take a greater amount of personal risk to fight it, than I would if my flat were on fire. My personal possessions can be replaced with a little money (some stuff is even insured) and a relatively small amount of work and time, but I have over two years of my life invested in my lab set up.
Hmm, not knowing that liquid nitrogen is completely non-flamable and ~200 degrees below zero...? Priceless. Way to go BBC, bang on science reporting as usual.
Pretty much any sealed container filled with any liquid can BLEVE though. The contents don't have to be flammable. A sealed water container can BLEVE and the shrapnel from the container can do a lot of damage (ie, kill or seriously maim human beings). So it is a threat of some significance, even if it is "just" liquid nitrogen.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
The composition of the building was not "clear" from those two photographs.
(The second photo linked to another phograph, which linked to another, etc., but I did not follow these, as the first one just showed more smoke, and I dispise "slideshows".)And those chemicals (except for the small amounts needed for, say, that day's experiments) could have been stored in an outbuilding, away from the main building and valuable equipment.And yet, the building was destroyed, when it needn't have been.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Obviously you know little about fire in the real world.
Wood is one of the better materials to have in a fire. Yes it burns, but it has the rare characteristic that it gives warning before it fails. A steel floor feels perfectly stable underfoot while the firefighters are rushing around, and then suddenly reaches the fail point and falls. A wood floor starts feeling softer and softer underfoot until it suddenly fails. Fire fighters can estimate how much time they have left before the building goes by feel. (though odds are this building did not have wood floors)
Wood is a good insulator, while steel conducts. A wood door will resist fire longer than a solid steel door, which will start whatever is on the other side of the door on fire. (steel fire doors have insulation inside that is better than solid steel, so this is a non-factor, but it is important to consider)
Paper covered drywall is a great thing to have in a fire. 5/8inch drywall is good for 1 hour in a typical home fire. Multi-unit dwellings have drywall between all units for this reason.
While smoke is always harmful, the smoke from a wood fire is much less harmfull than most other things that burn.
Wood desks do not burn easily. The heat tends to spread too fast to catch the rest of the desk on fire. If the building is on fire the wood desks will make it worse, but if you start a wood desk on fire in the middle of a room (where nothing else will burn) it is unlikely to spread to the next desk. (note that I'm talking solid wood, composites behave differently in fire)
Proper construction is much more complex than you realize.
Back when (around 1980, maybe earlier?), I saw an ad for Halon on TV. A man on a high chair was surrounded by a liquid, which was then ignited. After a few seconds, the Halon was activated and the fire was out in about 1 second. He could still breathe. He tried to light a match, to relight the still-present liquid, but the match went out instantly.
Of course, few were thinking about ozone depletion. I was just amazed this stuff was so fastand so long-lasting.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
But if there's nothing around that's flammable, a fire won't start in the first place, and if there's very little around that's flammable, any fire that does start won't get very far.
So it won't matter that wood gives you a better warning that it is about to collapse, because there won't be a fire in the first place.
And I have seen videos of demos where a fire starts on a couch, then burns hotter and hotter, then the paint and paper on the walls and ceiling catches fire.
If the walls were cement boards like those used in bathrooms in the shower area, covered with plaster or tiles or flame-resistant paint, they would not ignite in such a situation.
(Of course, if the couch were covered with flame-resistant fabric, the room would never get to that point in the first place, so I guess that it doesn't really matter.)
As far as steel doors go, I didn't mean solid steel doors; I meant steel doors of the kind that you can get at Home Depot or Lowes, which have a steel shell and insulated foam interior, except that the foam insulation should be non-flammable.
Either that, or leave out the insulation altogether.
It doesn't really matter, though, because without something to burn, the door would never have to withstand a fire in the first place.
The only reason that I wrote "steel door" was because I don't know of any other kind that won't burn.
As far as wood smoke being less harmful than other kinds, well, if there's no fire in the first place, it won't matter, since there will be no smoke at all.
To coin a phrase, were there's no fire, there's no smoke.
The whole point of my post was that a building can be constructed and furnished so that it won't burn in the first place (well, unless a tanker truck or airplane (OK, aeroplane, sorry) crashes into it).
Such a building would be more expensive than an ordinary building, but in the case of this facility, it would have been worth the extra expense.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
These photographs taken by one of my colleagues, which have been linked elsewhere from this topic, clearly show the structure c. 1600 yesterday. The BBC photographs were taken before noon, while the 200m cordon was still in place around the building.
The bulk of the flammable chemicals were stored in an outbuilding. In particular, the external hydrogen store was not affected by the fire, having been upwind of the building.
ps: "despise", not "dispise" (sic). Hope this helps.
Wood is a good insulator, while steel conducts. A wood door will resist fire longer than a solid steel door, which will start whatever is on the other side of the door on fire.
This is a know problem with fires on ships. Even a completly gas tight hatch will not prevent the spread of fire.
Paper covered drywall is a great thing to have in a fire. 5/8inch drywall is good for 1 hour in a typical home fire.
There isn't that much paper to burn. The plaster is gypsum (hydrated calcium sulphate), which dosn't burn.
While smoke is always harmful, the smoke from a wood fire is much less harmfull than most other things that burn.
Even if wooden furniture is made of solid wood there is the problem of glues, varnishes and polishes giving off toxic fumes.
Proper construction is much more complex than you realize.
Reinforced concrete is another material which can be troublesome in a fire.
The explosion was believed to have been caused by a gas leak.
Assuming that this is mains (rather than bottled gas) this would also mean plenty of fuel for a fire. Until someone was able to shut off the supply.
If you think about what kinds of dangerous and obnoxious chemicals they were using in there,
As well as all the perfectly ordinary things which will burn quite well, especially with a methane fueled fire.
And I have seen videos of demos where a fire starts on a couch, then burns hotter and hotter, then the paint and paper on the walls and ceiling catches fire. If the walls were cement boards like those used in bathrooms in the shower area, covered with plaster or tiles or flame-resistant paint, they would not ignite in such a situation.
False. Your normal wall is made from gypsum, which does not burn! In fact it actually resits fire because it contains water (which is chemically trapped in the molecules) which will boil out when you try to burn it, thus tending to put out the fire. 5/8 inch gypsome walls are rated as a 1 hour firewall.
The part that is false is that cement boards are better for walls that drywall.
The video of the couch is a real world situation.
Even if wooden furniture is made of solid wood there is the problem of glues, varnishes and polishes giving off toxic fumes.
Agreed. Though the amount of the above is typically much less than anything in the alternatives.
I apologize most profusely for not spending several hours doing in-depth research before dashing off a ten-minute post, unlike most people who post here.
P.S. "P S" or "P.S.", not "ps" (sic). Hope this helps.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
In fact, it didn't put it out at all.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Gypsum does not put out the fire. Gypsum stops the spread of fire through it. It is a firewall, one side can burn, but the other will not for about an hour.
Cementboard is worse. It won't burn, but you still have to cover it with paint (most people do not want tile in their livingroom), which burns just the same as gypsum.
I doubt they meant the mains. Semiconductor processing labs use highly toxic and highly explosive gases. Some examples include silane, germane, arsine, phosphine, etc...
These gases are very toxic (i.e. you'd be dead before you noticed a leak), but they're also pyroforic (i.e they self-ignite when exposed to air). A small leak in a small gas cylinder could lead to an immediate fire, and could trigger a catastrophic explosion of the gas cylinder. It's doubtful that even an advanced fire-supression system could deal with a significant leak from any one of these gases.