UCI Science Lab Wing Reopened After Fire

Four days after a fire in a chemistry lab closed a UC Irvine science building, professors and students were allowed to return to the opposite wing Friday afternoon.

“They opened the door, and grad students scurried to their computers,” said UC Irvine spokesman Tom Vasich. “Research waits for no one.”

The west wing houses mainly physics labs.

Officials hope to open parts of the east wing, where the second-floor fire occurred, today if air quality samples are OK, said Jim Tripodes, the university’s acting director of environmental health and safety.

People should be able to work on the fourth and fifth floors and get a chance to look at their labs and offices in the basement, first and third floors, he said. For the first time, scientists will get a sense of how much water damage occurred to their sophisticated machines.

The basement alone has more than $7 million worth of equipment.

The second floor will remain blocked off. The fire started there Monday when a doctoral student’s chemistry experiment blew up. The student was released from UC Irvine Medical Center Thursday night.