Cost of Blaze at UCI Labs: $3.5 Million

The fire that destroyed two UC Irvine chemistry labs last summer will cost the university about $3.5 million, including costs of cleanup, equipment replacement and rebuilding, campus officials said.

Two investigations prompted by the blaze in Reines Hall are expected to be completed by early next year.

An independent investigation is evaluating what the university did right and what could be improved, from the emergency response to the protective measures chemists could take during their experiments. The inquiry also will consider whether the building should have had sprinklers, said Ken Groves, who is leading the investigation. Groves retired recently after three years as the deputy for environmental safety and health for the University of California system.

Reines Hall opened in 1990. The Orange County building code at the time required sprinklers. But because UC Irvine is state-owned, it was built under the California code, which did not require sprinklers.

Groves, now based in Rutheron, N.M., would not discuss details of his investigation.

Groves was on campus three days after the July 23 fire. His team of four investigators was there within a week of the blaze. The team included an expert in accident investigation and emergency management and response, a chemistry professor and university safety officer, a fire protection engineer, and an expert on the state fire code.

A second investigation, being conducted by the university’s environmental health staff, is an inventory of fire safety features in all UCI buildings, including fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, exit plans and sprinklers, UCI spokesman Tom Vasich said last week.

The fire started on the second floor of the east wing of Reines Hall when graduate student Cy Fujimoto was purifying benzene, a flammable liquid. The experiment exploded when the equipment broke and oxygen mixed with the volatile chemicals.

“Some equipment malfunctioned,” said chemistry professor William Evans, whose lab was destroyed. “There was an explosion. Beyond that, we don’t know why it malfunctioned.”

Fujimoto, a student of Evans’, suffered second-degree burns on his face, right arm and right calf. He recovered in about six weeks, but still has slight pigment damage on his right hand. Fujimoto received his doctoral degree in November and is working at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Besides the area where Fujimoto and other students were working, smoke and water damaged an adjacent lab on the second-floor lab and rooms below, including Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone’s lab.

Cleanup costs were $1 million. Rebuilding the labs will cost $1.2 million to $1.5 million, plus another $1 million for new equipment, Vasich said.

The rebuilding work will be put out to bid soon, and the lab is expected to be ready in April. “As fast as they can build it, we’ll be in there,” Evans said.

Vasich said there are no plans to install sprinklers when the labs are rebuilt.

He said the building was designed to isolate fires, which did occur after the explosion. He said water can mix with some volatile chemicals and feed the flames.

Evans, who has worked with volatile chemicals for three decades and never had a fire, still is surprised by the explosion and resulting fire.

“It was a standard procedure by an experienced person with equipment used over and over for years and years,” he said. “Something went wrong. I never thought such terrible things could happen with this equipment.”