A stubborn fire gutted the top floor of a UC Santa Cruz laboratory building Friday and destroyed valuable gene research, some of which had taken 14 years to gather.
"Everything is destroyed," said researcher Manuel Ares, who had been using the lab to conduct federally funded experiments as part of the Human Genome Project. "It’s a devastating situation. I don’t know how far it has set me back."
The fire started about 5:30 a.m. on the fourth floor of Sinsheimer Laboratories in the campus area known as Science Hill, UCSC Fire Chief Charles Hernandez said.
It was contained a few hours later on the south end of the floor. But the fire flared again about 9:30 a.m., burning through a protective "fire wall" and destroying the inside of a second lab.
Flames stretching more than 5 feet shot out three windows, and crews rushed back into the building. The reignited fire shattered three more windows, raining glass on the ground below. Smoke billowed into the surrounding trees.
The fire apparently rekindled just after 9 p.m.
Firefighters reported seeing flames in a window of the lab that had burned earlier in the day.
"It’s not unusual for a fire to rekindle in a large structure fire," said 911 supervisor Mike Krakowiak.
| City fire crews responded with three engines and a truck to help UCSC firefighters. By 9:30 p.m., the blaze was knocked down, according to firefighters on the scene. |
It’s unclear how many labs are in the four-story building and how many people work there.
Campus spokesman Jim Burns said each floor has four wings containing offices and labs, but he couldn’t be more specific.
Ares said many of the genetic strains in his lab, which were stored in freezers, took 14 years to develop and could take that long to replace.
Ares’ research focuses on how genes impact different cells. His work was related to the Human Genome Project, a national effort to identify all 30,000 genes in human DNA, among other things.
At least four undergraduates also were conducting research in the lab.
The lab destroyed when the fire reignited was vacant.
Investigators have not determined the cause of the blaze, Hernandez said.
Ares said he left the lab at 10:30 p.m. Thursday and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Elizabeth Irwin, chief campus spokeswoman, said Friday afternoon that no damage estimate had been formulated, but added it was sure to be in the millions.
Capt. Paul Babb was one of the first firefighters on the scene. He said that as he approached the lab from inside the building, he saw no smoke but could feel heat radiating from a window on the door. At that point, a crew stationed outside reported seeing smoke and flames, and suddenly all four windows in the lab exploded.
Ares said the chemicals in his lab were neither combustible nor hazardous.
But Babb said fire crews did not know what chemicals they were dealing with, so they mostly fought the fire from inside the building to prevent runoff with possibly dangerous chemicals.
At 10 a.m., when most of the fire had been extinguished, professors who had gathered outside talked of bringing in more than 600 pounds of dry ice to freeze whatever biological material might be in freezers in the lab.
Irwin said "emergency triage" was under way to save genetic material.
The building cost $23 million to build, Ares said.
Hernandez said the building did not contain a sprinkler system because it was built in 1987, before fire codes mandated one. He said an internal sprinkler system may have helped to slow or control the fire.
The fire had no widespread impact on campus, though lab classes in the building were canceled, as were classes in the adjoining Thimann Lecture Hall, Irwin said. The university will determine next week when and where classes will resume.
Contact Jason Schultz at jschultz@santa-cruz.com.
