Campus-wide power failure Friday evening ....

SNF Lab Members:

As a number of you are painfully aware, the campus lost much of it's power at about 11:50 p.m. Friday night.  Power was restored as of about 2:15 a.m.  As a result of the power failure, we also experienced an in-lab set of blue toxic gas alarms that began shortly after midnight.

Thanks to good detective work by Ed Myers, we believe the gas alarm was triggered by the "stink" from the internal parts of the scrubber system that "backed into" the exhaust ducts and ultimately into the lab area.  Those detectable levels of gas dropped to zero as soon as the scrubbers were turned back on and no equipment that use the detected gases (HCl and HBr) were actually in use at the time of the power failure.

At this point it is safe to use the lab.  However, a number of pieces of equipment may not be fully functional.  Ed and Eric are turning equipment as I type this.  However, campus-wide chilled water and steam are not yet fully operational.  Accordingly, those pieces of equipment that require significant chilled water may not be fully operational for some time.

For the remainder of the weekend, you should look carefully at each piece of equipment to determine if it is functioning normally.  If there are doubts, don't use it.  Some tools, such as the ebeam will not be operational, I suspect, until sometime on Monday.

We are hopeful, however, that most pieces of equipment will be functional by the time you read this .... but check carefully.

Thank you for your continued support,

John