Huge fire at my university

[Kiyouta]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm

My department building at Southampton University has been engulfed in flames. The principle building was used for optical electronic research and though I never went in there I used the building connected to it (called Zepler). It was one of the nicer buildings at the University and only about 2 years old. Now it'll take at least that to rebuild it. :( No doubt vast amounts of research material have been destroyed, some of which was cutting-edge on an international scale.

The entire campus has been closed for today. I was staying at someone's accommodation when the fire happened. They have a view of the campus from a high up balcony. This pic was taken by me at 12:00 when the fire was said to be under control. You can see the smoke in the background. No-one was hurt in the blaze. Happened at 6:30am and took 5 hours to have the fire under control.

I haven't seen the aftermath yet as buses were being diverted from the campus. Hopefully Zepler wasn't damaged seriously. Very expensive computer equipment there, together with all the offices for our department's administration. Pretty important for my course and the entire Electronics and Computer Science department.

At present it is a crime-scene. No-one knows how the fire started. Could have been an accident or arson.

More pics of the fire can be seen here:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/rob1471/

I'm sure everyone has had something destroyed by fire at sometime in their lives. My course will continue, but some people have lost their life's work. Can't imagine how that would feel like.

[Mahdi]

That sucks.

[Andrew]

I havn't had fire affect me before personally. Except the time the hay caught fire from a down power line behind the house and caught a big field on fire.

UPEI building damaged by fire

The student building they were working on burnt down I think so they just built a new one without the old part.

[Khan]

That sucks mate, hope it doesn't disrupte your course too much.