Lab flood
Typically we’ve only posted good news here, but the lab flood we had last weekend certainly qualifies as “news”.
Elle came prepared with rain boots!
Last Saturday morning, we received an email with subject line “FLOOD” and news that two floors of our department were actively flooding. It included ominous warnings like “You don’t need a life jacket yet but soon”.
Graduate student Elle McCall arrived on the scene first, where it was raining from the floor above onto everyone’s desks, with multiple ceiling tiles already collapsed. She quickly moved the computers, data drives, lab notebooks, and other desk items to dry locations. Dr. Devineni and fellow PI Chris Rodgers arrived soon after and together we managed to contain most of the rain using garbage bags and trash bins.
We soon received word that the source of the water leak had been found and shut off, thanks to department head Steve L’Hernault physically diving into a hot water geyser with locking pliers to crimp the pipe and redirect the flow into a sink. The rain in the lab slowed down after that but we were left with inches of standing water throughout the lab.
Other than some notebooks, nothing was irreversibly damaged and the computers survived. We are thanking our lucky stars that the flood (which spanned most of our wing) stopped just short of the two-photon microscope room, which would have been a million times worse.
Current state of the lab
Now half of the lab is closed for a few weeks while the walls are being dried and potentially replaced. Our facilities staff, Jan Hawes and Paja Sijacic, have been truly amazing throughout this whole process. We are lucky to have such dedicated staff and a department head who saved us from worse damage!
