It wasn’t a chemical reaction that sent the Biomedical Research Facility into flames early Wednesday morning.
According to the Albuquerque Fire Department, a generator tested outside the building, north of UNM Hospital, on the ground level started the blaze.
Sam Giammo, spokesman for the Health Sciences Center, said the generator had a stack on it designed to carry fumes out over the top of the building.
“It appears that something inside that stack ignited,” he said. “We can’t confirm it, but this is our best guess right now.”
Giammo said the fire started sometime before 9 a.m. and burned for nearly 30 minutes.AFD Public Information Officer Melissa Romero said in an e-mail that the fire started on the exterior wall on the ground floor and traveled along the outside to the third floor causing damage to both the second and third floors.“There was smoke and fire damage to the exterior wall and into several offices,” Romero said.
Giammo said four buildings were evacuated, including all buildings adjacent to the BRF. He said nearly 400 employees were outside for about two and a half hours.
The AFD said that nobody was injured and a UNM text alert gave people the go-ahead to re-enter the HSC buildings, except for the Biomedical Research Facility, around 11:30 a.m.
Giammo said the BRF has not been reopened for occupancy yet but will likely allow employees to enter the bottom levels at 8 a.m. today. He said it has not been determined when the top floors will reopen.
“The top two floors — we are just going to have to wait and see,” he said.
Giammo said that so far the AFD has not found evidence of structural damage, but the fire inspector and the insurance adjustors are still evaluating the damage. He said it was not certain yet how much the damages would cost to repair.
“We don’t have any of those figures at this point,” he said.
Giammo said there was very little impact on the research project housed in the building.
“We don’t think we have taken any serious hits to our research efforts,” he said.
The fire damage mostly affected the third floor, but there was also water damage directly below that lab on the second floor from the fire fighters extinguishing the blaze, Giammo said.
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According to the AFD all emergency procedures were completed sufficiently.
Giammo said all precautions were taken to prevent the fire from starting.
“Since it started outside the building itself, there was very little that anybody inside involved with the research could do,” he said.
