response 26 of 292:

Sep 30 17:52 UTC 1999

That's probably it. 

response 28 of 292:

Sep 30 20:09 UTC 1999

That would explain it.  I can't get to my email either. 

response 30 of 292:

Sep 30 22:54 UTC 1999

  That also happened.  (Backhoes:  nature's most fearsome predator of the
  helpless fiber-optic cable..)  If you're interested in reading about that
  one there was an article in today's (9/30) Wired News..

response 32 of 292:

Oct 1 01:37 UTC 1999

Dpfitzen reports a problem with getting disconnected when trying to send
e-mails.  Has this happened to anyone else (using Pine)?  I suggested that
it might be caused by hitting Alt-X (a Procomm command to hang up) instead
of Ctl-X, but would like to know if other people are getting disconnected
while sending e-mail with Pine.

response 34 of 292:

Oct 1 05:27 UTC 1999

see 21
see 22

Something funky has been happening that "isn't a problem".

Additionally, I'm experiencing periodic "seizure", which I can't explain
where: everything runs fine, then exverything seems to halt, no text, no
echo, no answer to AYT and even pinging grex tends to fail.

Seems likely to be two distinct problems, but oops - prolly not "problems"

response 36 of 292:

Oct 1 15:04 UTC 1999

ZDNet article on the fiber cut:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2343896,00.html

Article posted to mtu.resnet, forwarded from Jeff Ogden, describing in
detail the UM fire: http://www.tech.mtu.edu/~dmbrodbe/fire.txt

response 38 of 292:

Oct 2 03:02 UTC 1999

I got to look at CCB several times -- once just after the fire, when
there still a very thick haze of smoke inside (we went in, turned power
off on the IFS machines, and got out of there), and again late today, to
salvage non-critical hardware like power cables and the like.  The smoke
was almost entirely gone today when I looked, so I was able to wander
around back to the UPS area and look at where the fire started.  It took
me a bit to find it -- I had never been back there before, and there is
a maze of low down concrete rooms which house the boilers and other bits
of ventilation system.  I knew I had finally found the room, though,
when I found one which had a *black* ceiling.  There was a lot of broken
glass in there, as apparently all the ceiling fixtures had exploded in
the heat (wonder where all the mercury went?)

The UPS system has a large number of big blue 70's style black boxes,
with various sorts of cryptic labels on them.  I never did figure out
which ones (if any) housed the diesels, but along the back wall, there
were a number of big anonymous looking boxes that turned out to be the
battery racks.  I could tell because the furthest one back was *the* one
that burned.  The blue paint had turned into white ash, the shiny metal
under it was black with corrosion and soot, and of course, the batteries
were still inside.  The ones in the bottom half of the case didn't look
too bad, they were still white plastic cases on shelves.  Along the top
half, though, the cases were severely melted and carbonized, and had
mostly slumped into a thick lumpy glaze on the tops of the batteries.
(The shelf probably kept the bottoms from getting so hot).  The wiring
conduits above these batteries had definitely undergone an unusual
experience.  These were basically aluminum tubing with really heavy
gauge wire rope conductors inside.  Presuambly they had once been
insulated, but evidently where the insulation had melted, the conductors
had touched the tubing, and vaporized it.  So the tubing basically had
very elongaged and slightly irregular holes chewed along one side of it.

There were several other UPS boxes next to the battery case, and while
these weren't in nearly as bad a shape as the battery case, they showed
distinct signs of damage.  These cases happened to have small control
panels on them, with some sort of meter (voltage?  current?) consisting
of a glass faceplate and black plastic framing it.  Much of this had
melted and deformed in the heat, giving it a very surrealistic
apparance.

Apparently, the fire put itself out.  Lucky us.

response 40 of 292:

Oct 2 13:28 UTC 1999

Thanks for the description, Marcus.

response 42 of 292:

Oct 3 15:49 UTC 1999

Yesterday, repeated efforts to log in connected to the termserver (got the
"Welcome to Grex!  (it may take a few seconds to connect)" message), followed
quickly by a disconnect.  An attempt to come in over the net got "connection
refused".

response 44 of 292:

Oct 3 22:42 UTC 1999

Probably your own computer, complaining about something.  Was it Windows? 
Had you hit the ALT key by accident?

response 46 of 292:

Oct 4 01:37 UTC 1999

Actually, what the old building needed was a smoke alarm.  I think it
did have sprinklers in some places, but not in the UPS bunker.  As it
happened, the fire *did* announce itself to public safety -- when the
temperature and power went out of bounds, and unfortunately after a lot
of smoke had been generated and a lot of wiring melted.  The nice thing
about the old building was that the UPS was in fact in a concrete bunker
well separated from the building, and concrete does not burn very well
at all.  It's too bad it shared the same ventilation system, otherwise,
the disaster could have been a lot less annoying.

I doubt any standard sort of fire suppression system would have done
much good for the UPS.  Sprinklers would have just dumped water on the
batteries, which probably would have then shorted out that much faster
and more violently.  A halon suppression system (which is now illegal to
install) probably wouldn't have made any difference to the short, but
would have interacted in a very interesting but probably much more
deadly fashion with the subsequent electrical fire (it probably would
have decomposed, releasing much greater amounts of chlorine, flourine,
and etc., which would have greatly hampered recovery efforts and
probably damaged more equipment.)

response 48 of 292:

Oct 4 15:15 UTC 1999

I've  heard of exploding lead-acid batteries in cars, and have thought
it was a hydrogen-air explosion, but come to think of it, the plates
in the battery are quite close together, and a internal short is quite'
possible. That should lead to some fireworks in a fully charged battery.
There would be no possible external protection against such a failure,
except to not have the explosion of one battery short or disrupt others. 
I would be interested in what was the initial failure mode, if it can be
determined, as I use lead-acid batteries in more than my car.