David Rothbard
David.Rothbard@ipst.edu

Our lab is equipped with a Halon fire suppression system. I can't verify that it works, as we have never needed it :)

Randy Nessler
rnessler@emiris.iaf.uiowa.edu

Several people have mentioned Halon to me, but I was under the impression that Halon has fallen out of favor due to potential toxicity and suffocation.

David Rothbard
David.Rothbard@ipst.edu

David;
A few years ago, we had a very bad rainstorm in Southern California. The roof of our R&D building (which houses the SEM) leaked, and the ceiling tile got so soaked that it fell in on the SEM console. When I came in the next morning, there was a steady stream of water pouring into the keyboard and down into the electronics of the SEM. Obviously, the SEM had tripped off. I unplugged it and called the vendor (Cambridge, at the time), since we were under a service contract. End result - we allowed it to dry for 3 days and fired it up. It worked fine, and has been operational ever since; no problems have been attributed to this incident. In summary, I believe that the risks associated with fire far outweigh the risks associated with water.

Bob Citron
Bob_Citron@cc.chiron.com

I agree. I have had equipment go through fires and floods. Given the choice, I would rather have wet equipment that will dry out than fried equipment or worse, fried people.

Harold Crossman
crossman@rd.sylvania.com

Good Morning All,
Bob Citron's response to David Rothbard reminded me on an incident we had with an AMRAY 1000 many years ago (20?). A cooling water line on the diffusion pump failed and filled the Plexiglass housing of the high voltage supply with treated cooling water. Upon discovery me heart entered my throat and visions of disaster entered my mind. As in Bob's case, the service engineer calmly drained the water, rinsed the power supply with deionized water and dried it with a hair dryer. Other component also have been wet, which he dried with Kim Wipes. When he fired it up I expected sparks to fly, etc. No way!! The microscope worked like nothing had happened. Today the scope is 23 or 24 years old and still running! These experiences would indicate that older analog instruments were pretty hardy. How a modern digital instrument would react to such treatment is a good question.

Bob Craig
craig@rd.sylvania.com

I would venture that analog instruments might be able to weather the onslaught of water better than newer instruments with lots of sensitive electronics. The best approach would be to contact computing centers and see what measures are taken to protect their instrumentation.

Secondly, some sort of risk assessment needs to be considered here. What are the odds that floods will be generated needlessly versus having a facility or instrumentation destroyed by fire? Most instances of fires affecting EM units that I have heard about were caused by fires originating other than in the EM room. Perhaps sprinklers could be used in locations other than the EM while the EM rooms could be protected by more electronically-friendly agents (Halon, carbon dioxide, etc).

Just my thoughts .....

John J. Bozzola, Ph.D
Email: bozzola@siu.edu

Halon is great for stopping fires but yes, the same mechanism that extinguishes the fire will suffocate people. Sprinklers are generally OK but I prefer a standard A-B-C rated fire extinguisher in the scope room. We have had "umbrellas" mounted over the scopes for the last 20 years- aluminum tube framework covered by a heavy-duty waterproof nylon fabric. We reside in an old building and very occasionally, plumbing accidents result in water leaking throught the ceiling above the scope. Regards,

Doug Davis
dbd1@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Dear David,
We have had one fire in an EM room--started when the LN delivery system ran dry and a solenoid valve shorted out. There are definitely other potential fire dangers, such as vacuum pumps. We do not have sprinklers. I have not heard of erronious tripping of sprinkeler sys- tems being a particular problem. All-in-all, I lean toward having a fire supression system, but there are obvious problems with a water- based one, even if it trips due to a real fire. Is there a better system for areas where large voltages and/or currents are present? Perhaps some industries have solved this problem.

Bill Tivol
tivol@wadsworth.org

Yes, but rainwater is clean. I have been told (third- or fourth-hand story by now) that it is not the water in sprinkler systems as much as the rust, junk and (perhaps) rust inhibitors in the pipes that cause the major damage.

Bob Wise
wise@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu

With regard to the thread about fire extinquishers in EM suites, we were told during our last safety inspection that we would need to get rid of our halon system the next time it needed a charge. This was mostly because the insurance companies would no longer cover such things. They require springler systems. They would rather pay the for lost equipment than the hazards of halon. Of course our safety officer had no answer to my question of whether the school would pay the 5,000 deductible or whether I would have to pay this.

W. Gray Jerome
jjerome@bgsm.edu

The sprinkler next to your scope may not be the problem. We are on the second floor, but when the sprinklers went off on the sixth floor, water eventually worked its way down to us. Luckily this happened in the daytime and we had enough time to cover done the scopes and computers. No one knew how to turn off the water so there was 6 inches on the 6th floor and ceilings collapsed on the 5th floor exactly as they are designed to do during a fire. There was no fire.

Greg Erdos
E-mail: gwe@biotech.ufl.edu

David,
We had a great central laboratory in the basement of the Graduate School with a fire sprinkler above each of three electron microscopes. The Dean worried that the sprinklers would ruin the microscopes, so they got insurance on them and required that I keep large plastic tarps to cover them in case the sprinklers went off. They never did, howwever...

One Saturday, we had a huge rainstorm and the Dean's secretary called me saying their seemed to be a "little problem in the lab." I rushed over there to find that the drains at the top of the stairs had filled with leaves and likewise the drain at the bottom and huge amounts of water, like a waterfall, was cascading down the steps and filling up the lab. The building power had gone off and the emergency lighting was on in the hallways. I called for the maintenance crew, but they were priortized to go save "expensive" student computers in another building. So there I was with my broom, frantically cleaning drains and pushing water, feeling like a character in Walt Disney's Fantasia. Because of this long and intense fight, the only thing we lost was the carpeting, papers and books on the lowest shelf. Saved the floor tile. The minimal rust on the feet of the EM's wasn't even noticeable. The lab was fine. Sprinklers a non-issue.

The real devastation was done by the administration, later, when a new Dean said "What are electron microscopes good for?" eyeing the space and salary line he could use for a new Executive Secretary. But that's another story. Kind regards and good wishes to all, Beverly

BGIAMMARA@magnum.mco.edu

First of all, I'm very glad for Bob & Bob that water on their SEM's did not cause any serious problems that simple drying out did not cure.

But I must relay my experience with a wet SEM lest folks get the impression that these instuments are waterproof (no one would ever REALLY think that would they?).

In past years, we have had water accidents in labs over our heads, in some cases two floors above, and water has leaked down through cracks in their concrete floors, through our ceiling, and onto our instruments (kind of like magnetic atraction). In one case enough water got into the SEM so that a circuit board that runs the Magnification readout and a few others were damaged a bit. Even after replacing some transistors, the boards still blew out when powered up again. My service engineer had to clean dirty residue left behind by the water off the boards - many boards - with ethanol and a toothbrush to get rid of ground paths causing electrical shorts. Naturally, such events are not covered by service contracts, so we sent the bill upstairs to the offending lab. Some one up there left water aspirator running all weekend, and naturally thats a good time for paper towels to fall off the wall into the sink to plug up the drain.

We then built plexiglass "deflectors" over our SEM and TEM, big sheets suspended from the ceilings, to deflect any water coming down to the sides onto the floor. Since installation in about 1985 they have saved us twice. We feel we got off easy, as the potential was there for really serious big time damage.

The overhead panels also prevent some dust from falling onto the instruments. And they make a great conversation piece when tours come through!

If there is any potential danger in your labs from overhead water pipes or water from rooms above, I'd recommend that folks put up some kind of water sheding panels. Could save a big head ache if the water ever comes down.

Gib Ahlstrand
giba@puccini.crl.umn.edu

In my current place of employment there are no sprinklers in the lab. I do agree with David that they are a mixed blessing. If they do open up, there is the possibility of damage to epquiment but in the real case of a fire, loss of epquiment is minor compared to a loss of a life.

In my preveiously employment, the maintance folks upgraded the sprinkler system to a water sprinkler and removed the Halon system. Their reasoning was that a person will get wet, but not dead as with the Halon system.

If a person is worried about electrocution with the water system, all electricty should be able to be shut off from a remote electrical substation.

Ed Calomeni
EMLAB@OPUS.MCO.EDU

Our building (1992) was designed with a computer room and sem room next to each other but independantly run and served by a single sprinkler system where the pipe is filled with air until a fire is detected by a heat sensor (or we open a valve in a red box like a fire alarm) then a pump fills the pipe with water but the sprinkler still has to get hot enough to melt to start water flowing (each room independant)

Email me direct if you need me to find out details from the planners

Alan S. Pooley ,PhD
Pooley@ahab.rutgers.edu

I hope this is the last word on sprinklers. Outside of universities, especially in industrial labs, the Fire Marshall is God, and there must be sprinklers, no matter what is under them. The other official philosophy is that the building is usually worth more than your microscope, and that is hard to argue with. In the past it was possible to get Halon. Halon is not hazardous, but it is an ozone depleting chemical, was banned by the Montreal protocols, and is no longer available.

John Mardinly
JMARDINLY@IMO.intel.com

I think that the fire safety issue is important enough to continue the thread. An incident happened in my building last week which reminded us of the importance of smoke detectors. An instrument which had been left running and unattended many times in the past began to melt down when on this occasion was left unattended for 15 minutes. Part of the instrument became red hot, melted a hole in the bench top, and sent thick, black, acrid smoke into the room and two adjacent ones. Directly above the instrument are located air intake and exhaust vents which pulled some smoke and presumably heat out of the room. The heat activated sprinkler (designed to be activated at 135F, we think) did not activate, presumably because heat was exhausted away. Fortunately, a student returned to discover the situation.

Later we extracted the following information from the large gathering which included 7 firemen, several safety and facilities management personnel: smoke detectors are not required under current fire safety codes in this city. Our building is two years old. The nearest smoke detector was approx. 100 feet away in the lobby.

I suspect that the lack of smoke detectors in laboratories is not unique to this building or this city. The safety office here on campus has at least taken this matter under consideration. We also realized that we have taken equipment reliability for granted.

Don Gantz
GANTZ@med-biophd.bu.edu