DAILY LOBO new mexico
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May 6, 2010
thursday The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Media helps catch thieves by releasing security video by Shaun Griswold Daily Lobo
Vanessa Sanchez / Daily Lobo Jay Parkes, left, Nancy Sinclair and Teresita McCarty look at the damage to the Biomedical Research Facility on north campus Wednesday. The fire began when the emergency generator was tested. The building burned for 30 minutes before being extinguished by the Albuquerque Fire Department.
UNMH fire sparked by flame in smoke stack by Leah Valencia Daily Lobo
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 reenter 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
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Publicized surveillance footage was the key to capturing two young men recorded stealing from the New Mexico Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Kristian Rose, 22, and Alexander Bruin, 21, confessed to the April 26 break in at the Court of Appeals next to the University of New Mexico School of Law. UNM Police Lt. Robert Haarhues said the bandit couple stole two computers, a painting and a law book. “We worked in conjunction with Crime Stoppers and turned the surveillance footage over to the media,” Haarhues said. “It was on the 5 o’clock news and at 5:15 we started receiving phone calls.” Rose and Bruin are charged with breaking and entering and burglary. The video showed the two young men walking around the Court of Appeals for about two hours and leaving with the stolen items. KRQE News aired the footage Tuesday night. The pair hired attorneys and turned themselves in Wednesday afternoon to UNM Police Department, Haarhues said. “We had 10 different calls identifying the same person,” Haarhues said. “It was easy nabbing the two suspects. They even had friends calling them to tell them their faces were on the news.” Haarhues said the suspects did not give a clear motive and the items were returned. “They actually dropped off the hard drives in front of the law school last week,” he said. “We were able to retrieve the monitors, the painting and the book in working condition.”
Physical Plant waiting on parts to repair 74-year-old elevator by Kallie Red-Horse Daily Lobo
The Scholes Hall elevator has suffered a “catastrophic failure,” Mary Vosevich, director of the Physical Plant, said the wording on the notice plastered throughout the halls of the administrative office building is not meant to be dramatic. “That’s just a term that we use for the elevator that cannot be repaired without procuring some other parts that can’t be bought,” she said. “It’s an old elevator so the parts needed are not really off the shelf type of items that you might have with a new elevator. To make the repairs they have to be manufactured.” Repairs will begin May 17,
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Vosevich said. PPD representatives said the elevator could be as much as 74 years old, since it was installed when Scholes Hall was built in 1936. It is a small inconvenience to have to take the stairs, Natalie Brigance, executive assistant to the vice president of Student Affairs, said. “Personally I try to not ride it so I am just bee-lining it up the stairs,” she said. “But today I wanted to go for a bike ride and I had to get help to get the bike down the stairs to the main level so I could go ride it. That was kind of an inconvenience. Usually I do ride the elevator when I have my bike with me.” Kathryn Padilla, a provost administrative assistant, said it has been an issue for some to go to
events taking place on Scholes’ upper levels. “We had a luncheon on the second floor and one of our attendees came over from the Health Sciences Center and he is actually on oxygen and up in age,” she said. “He couldn’t make it up to our meeting because he has a walker and he has oxygen so it was really frustrating for him because he really wanted to attend. It is frustrating for someone not being able to utilize it when they need to.” The elevator has malfunctioned for years said Selena Salazar, administrative assistant to the Provost. “Everybody knows it has issues. There has been at least one or two people stuck in it for 30 minutes,” she said. “There was a gentleman
that works here who opened the elevator door and he looked down into a black hole because it just wasn’t there.” The elevator’s jack failed three weeks ago causing the elevator to be shut down, Vosevich said. There wasn’t much the Physical Plant could do except wait. “The issue with this is that the parts are not readily available,” she said. “Needed parts are being fabricated right now and we are anticipating that we are going to start the repair the Monday after commencement.” Padilla said the elevator breaks often and she has experienced the malfunctions herself. “I got stuck in it once but not for very long, less than five minutes. It
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was with another employee in the morning right before work,” she said. “It resolved itself fairly quickly but just from the last three and a half years that I’ve been here I can recall at least three separate occasions where someone got stuck in there. That’s at least once a year.” The building and elevator are old Vosevich said, but UNM does the best it can to maintain all the elevators on campus. “We have a maintenance contract for the elevators here on campus,” she said. “We have people that are here on our campus everyday but we have probably a couple hundred elevators here. They do preventative maintenance for us, they do repairs for us and we always have access to help.”
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