Fire destroys parts of Delft University in the Netherlands

[cosmicalstorm]

Always a shame to see a great library go up in flames
Though on the bonus-side it's fun to throw the video where parts of the building collapses in the face of 9/11 truthers.

Delft University fire burns all night

Wednesday 14 May 2008

The fire which ripped through Delft University’s architecture faculty continued to burn all night under fire brigade supervision, according to early newspaper reports.

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The fire, which broke out after a short circuit in a coffee machine on the sixth floor early on Tuesday morning, quickly spread upwards through the 13-storey building. Later the blaze moved down to the lower floors. One wing collapsed late on Tuesday afternoon.

‘We are watching the building fall apart in front of our eyes,’ a fire brigade spokesman told the Volkskrant.

Some 185 fire officers and 50 fire engines were at the scene of the blaze, which had been cordoned off to hundreds of onlookers.

The faculty, which had a library of some 40,000 books, drawings, models and furniture, was preparing a new exhibition of drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and others.

The collection, described by TU information specialist AD Bercht in the Volkskrant as ‘the most important architectural collection in the country’, has been destroyed, the paper said.

No-one was injured in the blaze.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... rns_al.php

In the morning of May 13th, 2008 a fire started in the main building of the faculty of architecture. The fire soon engulfed several floors of the southern wing of the building. As fire fighters struggled to control the blaze, the fire spread throughout the building which had been evacuated when the first fire alarm went off.

The damage to the building is extensive. Parts of the northern wing have collapsed and it is feared that the rest of the building may follow. The fate of the library, considered the be one of the finest in Europe and containing several thousand books, some over 100 years old is still unknown, although it is presumed to be damaged signficantly, if not completely destroyed. Firefighters were reportedly able to save some of the historic models and furniture, including chairs by Gerrit Rietveld and Le Corbusier.[10]

It is believed the fire was started by a ruptured water pipe which short circuited a coffee machine on the sixth floor of the building.

Video of fire and partial collapse:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ff1_1210707903

[The Grim Squeaker]

The faculty, which had a library of some 40,000 books, drawings, models and furniture, was preparing a new exhibition of drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and others.

OUCH . Talk about bad timing, the damage was catastrophic enough anyway.

[Siege]

Many of the works of Rietveld and Le Corbusier and dozens of scale models that were believed to have been lost in the fire turned out to be perfectly fine today. Haven't heard anything about the library proper yet, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it survived as well.

[Mr Bean]

Collapse happens 44 seconds into the video, it looks nasty, but it's not a full collapse, the building's upper stories fall in sections so it's not one piece.