Thanksgiving disaster strikes the Schrader lab
Our department literally on fire
When my phone went off at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 23, I hoped all was good with my aging family members back in Germany. A few hours later, I learned through a voicemail left by Associate Director James Brock of Wayne State Facilities Planning & Management that there had been a fire in the department.
So I drank the rest of my coffee faster and headed out to the department to arrive around 7 a.m. The place looked busier than usual for that time of the day and surely that day of the year. Moreover, I was welcomed by three well-composed individuals who I had tried to get into this building since summer. Besides Mr. Brock, this included the head of Wayne State Facilities Planning & Management, Robert Davenport, the head of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Jason Gizicki.
Like in the movies, the team sipped coffee and explained in the calmest terms possible that a fire had consumed an entire room of the laboratory of Associate Professor Jared Schrader on the second floor. And that office suite and the Chair’s office were drenched in water because of the fire department’s understandable efforts to terminate the fire above.
This was the dark start of a once-in-a-lifetime journey that saw the hands and minds of the entire department coming together, in addition to the uncompromising efforts of Facilities Planning & Management and many others of the Wayne State community. President Espy stopped by to check in on her way to see the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade for the first time in her life.
The next day, Dean Hartwell toured the Department to take a detailed look at the situation. The final acknowledgment belongs to the first responders, i.e., graduate students Aishwarya Chauhan, Kaveendya Dona, Udayan Guha, Hiranthi Kulanthungage, Vincent Lawal, Bianca Pereira, Hadi Yassine, Anja Zlatanovic and Dr. Schrader himself.
Their joint efforts rescued freezers, refrigerators and their invaluable contents in the middle of the night and throughout the day. The ensuing three weeks of 24/7 remediation and air duct cleaning throughout the department seem far distance now. And yet, we still discover missing or malfunctioning pieces. It will take considerable time to fully rise back to normal.
The painful costs incurred in experiments lost, time lost and student progress delayed are guaranteed to linger on. But there is one important thing we gained: A radically new rapport with Wayne State Facilities Planning & Management.
The members of this unit have become familiar faces who respond fast and are fully committed. This instills confidence the effects of too many years of delayed maintenance in the building will have been addressed in the foreseeable future.
Markus Friedrich