Dear everyone
In 13 may the faculty of architecture burned down. I was sitting in my office
in the 8th floor, working consentrated, and i did not hear the fire alarm. 15
min after that everybody was outside the building someone took a last
round in order to check that everyone was outside. Then he found me and
i left the building. I thought that it was just another false alarm, so
i grabbed my bag in order to use the hour outside to read some
papers.....
When i came out, i saw the smoke comming out of the window in the 6th
floor..... The fire started at 9 o clock, and i was out of the building
9.30..... The firemen could not stop the fire from inside. Since the
building do not have any water sprinkling system, the south wing from
the 6th floor up to the 13th floor (the top floor) burned down the
first 2 hours.... I though that our offices in the north wing were safe. At 4.15 our offices were on fire and
the wing collapsed just before 5 o clock..... Here on the movie from
this newspaper you can see the collapse of our offices... We was
sitting on the 8th floor (and now it is on the ground floor......
http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article535992.ece/Gebouw_TU_Delft_deels_ingestort
The good news that it was only 250 people in the building when the fire
started. Luckly it was not one hour later!!!! No one got killed. We are
about 3000 students and around 800 employees who use the building....
It is designer for 1000 people, i heard.... (thus over-used...!!!!).
There were several people who had everything from their researh life in
their offices.....
I lost my whole article library, built up for 14 years,
some data and books. Luckly i have the raw data and several back ups at
home for all my researh. And that i have ALL my books at home :-)
So this was the shocking news from Delft. Please feel free to send this
email around with the following warnings: 1. Always take the fire alarm
seriously. 2. Have always back up of your work somewhere else (several
people lost their whole life work in the fire).
Kind regards Akkie :-)
Dr. Akkelies van Nes
Assistant professor
(home adress)
Oostsingel 115
2612 HG Delft
The Netherlands
tel +31 6 28409252
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