I've been quite distracted today by a fire at my former university (technical university Delft, the Netherlands). I studied there at the civil engineering faculty. My building was next to the architecture department's ("bouwkunde"). This morning that building caught fire. No casualties, but the building is a complete write-off. (Photo by praeseodymium )
In that picture there's one spot of visible fire. Three meters to the side and one floor down (approximately, I don't remember the very exact floor) was where I had the meeting with the chairman of my PhD committee. And another floor down was the office of one of my supervisors. Yuck. And the office next to hers and the one next to that: both PhD colleagues that I met quite often. Yuck. It comes pretty close that way.
It was only little more than a year ago that I was inside the building for some small conference...
Update: ok, those rooms that I mentioned: that part of the building just collapsed. You can see the dangling floorplates in this photo . Update 2: and there's a video of the collapse (after 40 seconds).
My name is Reinout van Rees and I program in Python, I live in the Netherlands, I cycle recumbent bikes and I have a model railway.
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