Sad News from the University of TN

[Kenny T Cornett]

Well, on Friday, around 3:00 in the afternoon, a terrible accident happened in our engine lab. Our advisor was running his research engine (v-8 diesel) when it sparked off a fire. Needless to say that due to the fuel tank and other petro-chemicals in the room, the fire was massive. We lost our entire engine lab (chassis dyno, engine dyno, waterbrake, etc), all Dr. Irick's research, many of the tools in our machine shop (adjacent to the engine lab), our entire wind tunnel and aero lab, the entire infrastructure of the mechanical/biomedical/aero building....


Let's all have a moment of silence...

http://wate.images.worldnow.com/images/5698387_BG1.jpg
http://media.graytvinc.com/images/utfirestack.jpg


1st and 2nd floor of the east wing are totally gone, all 6 floors in the east wing were flooded, and all 6 floors in both wings sustained terrible smoke damage.


Saddest part... the SAE lounge is toast... all our chairs, posters, books, etc... gone. Luckily, the SAE projects aren't stored in that building, but it sucks that our meeting place and computer lab are gone...

Friday was teh suck

[Kenny T Cornett]

Well, on Friday, around 3:00 in the afternoon, a terrible accident happened in our engine lab. Our advisor was running his research engine (v-8 diesel) when it sparked off a fire. Needless to say that due to the fuel tank and other petro-chemicals in the room, the fire was massive. We lost our entire engine lab (chassis dyno, engine dyno, waterbrake, etc), all Dr. Irick's research, many of the tools in our machine shop (adjacent to the engine lab), our entire wind tunnel and aero lab, the entire infrastructure of the mechanical/biomedical/aero building....


Let's all have a moment of silence...

http://wate.images.worldnow.com/images/5698387_BG1.jpg
http://media.graytvinc.com/images/utfirestack.jpg


1st and 2nd floor of the east wing are totally gone, all 6 floors in the east wing were flooded, and all 6 floors in both wings sustained terrible smoke damage.


Saddest part... the SAE lounge is toast... all our chairs, posters, books, etc... gone. Luckily, the SAE projects aren't stored in that building, but it sucks that our meeting place and computer lab are gone...

Friday was teh suck

[Homemade WRX]

that's a bummer...we only have those things to loose and that is if the 30x60 windtunnel burns completely...

[Dan G]

I really thought you were going to say someone died. You guys are lucky! Tough break on the lab space though, sorry to hear about the accident.

[Greg Holden]

Sorry to hear about the loss. Without taking anything away from the situation I think this would be a good opportunity to stress safety in our labs. I'm sure that every precaution was taken but lets hope this can be a lesson for everyone else that safety cannot be compromised in any situation. We're all fighting deadlines and rushing things but safety is one area that must kept up.

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

stupid advisors making our fsae lives harder...

[major_ashwa]

Hey guys sorry to hear about this news . i know how u guys must feeling ab0ut tragic this incident . take it by stride and wish u all the very best well wishes to rebuild ur lab.

[Rear]

Kenny,

This being the beginning of the holiday season and all, what might you need to help get your team back on its feet? I realize that the university's insurance will probably cover many things, and that dynos are a lot beyond what another team can donate, but are there specific things that your team had that might not be replaced by insurance, specific books, tools, etc.? Anything that might help to keep progress going? I think something like this is among the worst fears for any team and while we are all in the same boat with respect to restricted funds, I feel that many teams might find a little room to help out another team in this type of situation.

[B Hise]

our team will help out too.

[Parker]

We dont have much, but are willing to help any way we can.

[Kenny T Cornett]

We truely appreciate the offer of help! Our library was pretty hefty and that's what's hurting the most for FSAE. We lost 3 copies of RCVD and the workbooks too. We also lost 5 copies of the Bosch automotive handbook, a copy of Engineer to Win, Drive to Win, Chassis Engineering, and several (about $2000 worth) of SAE papers.

I don't really think we're looking for handouts, but if anyone has an older beat up copy of some of those books or any relevant papers that they are through with or have copies of, we'd gladly take them.


As for the computer loss, thankfully we have the SolidWorks sponsorship and have everything on an external harddrive that I carry personally when we meet to work/learn. We lost matlab/maple stuff, as well as some library models, but all those are replaceable.

Tooling losses are being covered by the school (thank goodness)... it was a shared machine shop with the facilities services crews, so they have it covered.



again, if you have any beat up greasy copies of some of those books or others like them, we'll take them if you're feeling generous, but we're not looking to rebuild from donations or anything.

Thanks for the thoughts guys