Thanks Lilli,
This brings up an important point that has not been mentioned for a bit
and bears restating. It is imperative that we make contact with those
who will be responding to our labs in the event of an incident such as
Lilli described. This is especially important for higher field,
unshielded magnets, and MRI facilities.
Fire personnel have been injured severely because technical personnel
were inappropriately evacuated and no one could inform the responders to
the persistent magnetic hazard (see post
http://chemnmr.colorado.edu/ammrl/archives/May-2002/59.html).
Rainier recently posted a nice video for showing to your fire personel
showing in no uncertain terms what can happen if the magnet gets hold of
them (
http://chemnmr.colorado.edu/ammrl/archives/February-2006/38.html).
Most firefighters are using composite graphite-aluminum air cylinders
now, but many municipal fire departments are underfunded and there are a
number of those steel cylinders still in use. Air packs aside, the
sheer number of steel implements carried by fire personnel can do plenty
of damage even if the firefigher is not caught himself/herself.
We just took delivery of a new 400 system and have been trying to set
up training for the local fire station without success as yet. Be
persistent. The event may happen only once (or hopefully not at all),
but the consequences of failure are fairly predictable and quite
unpleasant.
Cheers,
Rick
Richard W. Fitch
Department of Chemistry
Indiana State University
600 Chestnut Street
Science Building, Rm. S35E
Phone: (812) 237-2244
Fax: (812) 237-2232
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>>> Ulrike Werner-Zwanziger <Ulli.Zwanziger_at_dal.ca> 4/13/2006 10:15 AM
>>>
Dear Colleagues,
recently, we had a smoke incidents in our solid state NMR room
originating from some roof work done on our roof. No harm done overall
and the responses were very professionally, but there were a few things
we learned to prepare for a possibly more serious incident. These might
be of interest for you to consider:
- Put warning signs on the inside of the doors! When the firemen and
fire woman arrived our doors stood open and all signs were covered up.
We were there, so everything turned out well, but one could imagine
otherwise.
- Have a manual switch to turn on the exhaust fans. Mine were only
operated by the oxygen sensors (sigh!) and the central facilities
management. So I wheeled in liquid nitrogen and used the exhaust gas
to
blow onto the oxygen sensors (truly an emergency procedure!)
- Check, where your closest fire and smoke alarms are.
Safe resonating and Happy Easter
Ulli
--
Dr. Ulrike Werner-Zwanziger
Adjunct Professor
Senior NMR Spectroscopist
Department of Chemistry, IRM, ARMRC
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS, Canada, B3H 4J3
Phone: (902) 494 1948
FAX: (902) 494-1310
e-mail: Ulli.Zwanziger_at_Dal.ca
Received on Fri Apr 14 2006 - 14:50:47 MST