Damaged UW lab belongs to pharmacology chair Ruoho
The UW-Madison lab that was damaged in a fire Monday night belongs to Arnold Ruoho, according to Brian Mattmiller of UW Communications.
Ruoho is chair of the department of pharmacology, which is in the School of Medicine and Public Health.
The Madison Fire Department responded to the fire at 1215 Linden Drive -- which is at the corner of Charter Street and Linden -- a little after 8 p.m. Firefighters found heavy smoke on the fourth floor and began extinguishing the flames.
Firefighters broke out a window facing the street to ventilate the room. They had the fire under control within 15 minutes, according to department spokesman Eric Dahl.
Once the smoke cleared, firefighters noticed a sign on the laboratory door indicating radioactive materials were stored inside and called in the fire department's Hazardous Incident Team (HIT).
"The use of low-level isotopes is a fairly common thing in just about any biology laboratory in this day and age," said Terry Devitt of UW Communications. "So it would be routine that type of sign would be put up in the lab. Those are standard re-agents that are used in lots of different biology labs -- they're used as tracers -- so it's fairly common that you would have small amounts of low-level radio active materials in lots of different labs around campus.
"But we keep very good track of those, and it doesn't sound like there was any in the lab at the time."
HIT members donned protective suits and went inside to survey the materials in the lab. The team used instruments to rule out the presence of any radioactive materials.
Mattmiller said Tuesday that the lab that was damaged is a smaller one adjacent to Ruoho's main lab at Bardeen Medical Laboratories.
Phone messages and e-mails left for Ruoho were not immediately returned.
According to the UW-Madison Web site, Ruoho's lab studies the molecular mechanisms that underlie neurotransmitter release and receptor activation. A student in Ruoho's lab will receive training on the molecular pharmacology of neurotransmitter mechanisms, membrane protein purification, synthesis and use of photoaffinity labels, and applications of molecular biology to the study of receptors, G proteins, effectors and transporters.
On Wednesday morning, neither the Madison Fire Department, University Police Department nor UW Communications had any more information on the cause of the fire or financial estimates of how much damage was done.
Although no contamination was found, fire equipment was rinsed with water to remove any residue from the smoky fire, Dahl said.
There were no injuries, and no damage estimate was available, he said.
The city of Madison fire investigation unit is assisting the UW police department in determining the cause of the fire.
Dahl put out a warning that people should leave a building when they hear a fire alarm sounding.
"At (Monday night's) fire, several people were still working in the building while firefighters were extinguishing the flames," he said in a press release. "Police were requested to get the people out of the building and out of harm's way."
The campus fire was the hazardous material team's second incident Monday, the first being an afternoon chemical spill at a pharmaceutical company in the University Research Park.
Michelle Stocker/Capital Times
Firefighters climbed truck ladders to reach a fire in the room of this third-story university-owned building on campus Monday night.
