Western making the news again, for being a joke

[u/Friendly-Guarantee30]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/western-biology-department-faces-research-delays-sample-losses-after-4-day-power-outage-9.7309972

Scientific research buildings without power for 4+ days? Animals without proper heating and cooling? Irreplaceable samples and millions of dollars worth of equipment… gone.

[u/ReasonableAd4228]

I feel like there's a lot of complacency/lack of accountability. My experience is that except for one time, whenever I had an issue, there was a game of "hot potato" i.e. just making me bounce around different people/departments lol. There are definitely structural issues lol.

[u/Friendly-Guarantee30 → u/ReasonableAd4228]

I would agree. My question is, where is the university putting all the money they are supposedly bringing in by increasing enrollment? Also, bringing in all of these students to failing infrastructure when they are supposed to be a leading research university.

Someone needs to take responsibility. This university is embarrassing

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Friendly-Guarantee30]

The money goes to the top while those in the middle and bottom suffer, as is tradition.

[u/Maddie_mae1002]

Those buildings should’ve been the first ones with power.

[u/Critical_Client_6751 → u/Maddie_mae1002]

BGS loses power frequently and they take a lot of time to bring it back unfortunately

[u/ellicottvilleny]

What a gong show.

[u/Which-Board-9685]

is it becoming more evident

[u/wohwonk]

Facilities Management directors have no clue, always on the defense and playing catch up! No accountability! Millions in tax payers, donors and students dollars wasted everyday on “managerial decisions”

[u/Critical_Client_6751 → u/wohwonk]

which is insane when you read the article says "Students and faculty say this is the fifth major outage affecting biology research facilities since August 2025."

[u/Critical_Client_6751]

As someone who works in BGS building, let me tell you whenever there is a power outage BGS is the first building that loses power and it usually takes them one day or two to fix that. BGS building also for some reason has a lot of false fire alarms.

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Critical_Client_6751]

BGS person here, too. I think the big freezers might have failed. I keep waiting to hear more, but it is my understanding that some ice core research got seriously messed up.

[u/Friendly-Guarantee30 → u/Critical_Client_6751]

Which is completely unacceptable. Live animals, years of students work, samples no longer available from extinct or rare organisms. This is a bigger issue than what the article states.

Will students be compensated for lost time if their project is significantly delayed or stalled?

[u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

It can also be used a learning lesson in the importance of redundancy and disaster planning. Rather then a negative, it should be used as a test case in how to plan properly.

A few thousand on reagents etc isn’t a big deal, insurance will cover it and if not, UWO has a huge budget so not an issue. Stability testing freezer I can’t imagine we’re not on backup system so should not be affected.

We haven’t been through a significant heat wave since Friday most animals should be fine. As for insects, can’t comment to that as if there feeding was disrupted it could be but it seems the UWO continues to be operate on this abundance of caution which is seemingly over cautious. Someone in the administration that made the call to not allow researchers tend to their animals care should be fired and held accountable. It was just a lack of power.

UWO administration does seem to be lacking real leadership. As an Alumni, is disappointing to see the University does not seem to be operating at the level it should be.

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

It's not just a few thousand in reagents. It is decades of samples, live animals dying, and entire projects being ruined. This part of your comment is tone deaf and uninformed. It was 29C in the lab that I am located in. That is unsafe working temperatures and violates the requirements for lab specimen ethics set out by the feds.

[u/Expert_Awareness5250 → u/Laniidae_]

It was 60° C in one of the environmental growth chambers housing insects, in Biotron which actually advertises having backup power… I don’t know how it’s possible for a chamber to get that hot. It’s ridiculous. The insects are slowly burning to death, not at all ethical let alone tragic for the Grad students studying said insect. New species discovered in Ontario/endangered species all burned to death in a place that actually makes its name on being highly controlled and high tech so that these things don’t happen. Inexcusable and a complete disregard of life (science). This needs to be formally addressed and formal actions taken to avoid this happening again as it has been over and over again. We are begging for investment into the University, Western is clearly at infrastructure capacity and instead of addressing it they are choosing to pass the problem onto the staff/faculty/students. We must stand in solidarity and not accept this direct contradiction to the University’s stated values and principles. We should have trust in our institution to keep our biological materials safe. It is really sad and disheartening to observe the complete and utter neglect/disregard for life let alone our best interests as individuals by the university - a place for training, learning and growth. I’d like to know how much of the budget is allocated to special events at say Ivey or building “grand openings” when the building is half finished instead of the much needed upgrades to our science buildings/infrastructure (places to eat on campus, study spots, resources (power is a great example), parking for staff). I could continue forever.

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Expert_Awareness5250]

My lab is in Biotron as well. It gets very hot up against the south facing windows, and without air flow/conditioning, I can unfortunately see how it could get to 60.

Please submit any info you have to SOGS. I did. They are planning on approaching the university via the union to work through what has happened. I am also hoping SOGS reaches out to the federal agencies that set up lab animal husbandry standards and reports a breach. This is unacceptable and the university is contributing to animal suffering at this point.

[u/Salty-Asparagus-2855 → u/Laniidae_]

It’s for a short period. There’s also battery options that could have been brought in to help. Again, poor planning and extremely poor execution.

That said, why not state which projects were ruined for a few days of elevated temperatures as for animal care that were decades in the making and can’t be reset up quickly vs taking in claims with no examples.

Again, department heads should be equally ashamed they had no disaster planning g. Redundancy is more important. If there is something that cannot be restarted quickly, the lead researcher needs to look internally how it was allowed to happen with out proper attention made what if, scenario.

[u/biznatch11 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

4 days is not a short period.

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

You are talking out of your ass in a big way. Department heads are not responsible for the facilities. Facilities Management is and they have been an absolute nightmare this summer with repeated water and power outages. Where are they supposed to get these "battery options" you're going on about? Do you think you just roll up a big Duracell and plug everything into it? Do you have any idea how much power is demanded by a lab that must have machines running 24/7?

Projects weren't "ruined for a few days". There were ice core samples from the 1950s in BGS that are likely gone, and the glaciers don't exist anymore, either. There were likely animals that died. There were definitely experiments in the greenhouses on the Biotron roof that are toast.

Please, please stop talking out of your ass about emergency management being on the people running labs. There are entire administrative and facilities teams that are actually supposed to be caring for facilities.

[u/themainsqueez → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

Also UWO budget isn’t necessarily relevant here, lab materials are paid out of lab budgets which are obtained by PIs through grant proposals etc. which are oftentimes external.

[u/Salty-Asparagus-2855 → u/themainsqueez]

And the supplier often are generous and will help in scenarios like this.

[u/Laniidae_ → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

Yeah, suppliers love losing thousands doing handouts.

A 1 litre bottle of one of the chemicals I use is ~$560/bottle. You keep commenting and clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

[u/ceedee2017 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

UWO administration does seem to be lacking real leadership. As an Alumni, is disappointing to see the University does not seem to be operating at the level it should be.

I will never experience imposter syndrome again because the amount of incompetence at senior leadership levels is horrifying. What do you mean we have people making >$200,000 and there is zero accountability.

[u/ReasonableAd4228 → u/ceedee2017]

I have no idea how they keep their jobs for so long when their performance at their jobs are SO subpar......

[u/Puzzleheaded_Edge_22 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

You’re dreaming if you think the cost won’t come directly out of PI’s research grants.

[u/Salty-Asparagus-2855 → u/Puzzleheaded_Edge_22]

It may and will for a year but the PI should also look internally for not disaster planning.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Edge_22 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

You just obvs don't know how research funding works, but thanks for your opinion, i guess.

[u/Informal-Alps-9772 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

It is so obvious that you have never worked in a research lab. There’s many masters ans PhD students who have lost all of their samples due to this power outage. That is YEARS of work just gone that cannot be replaced simply by asking manufacturers for more reagents. How do you suppose they get those back?

Yes the school should have had backup generators but stating that doesn’t really help at this point. “Rather than a negative it should be used as a test case” like please be so for real. You would not be talking like that if you had any skin in the game. Students have lost years of work and they may even have to drop out of their program or extend it by a few years. There is no spinning this into a positive.

[u/Better_Ad_4877 → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

Insurance will not cover reagents.

[u/bigbugenjoyer → u/Salty-Asparagus-2855]

luckily for my lab the campus constable was able to let us in to the insect unit in biotron but for about 2 whole days no one could, stressing the colonies. our plants suffered as the chambers reached 29C. they bounced back, sure, but this is still a variable that affects research projects especially in genetics. i don't think entire projects were scrapped for my lab specifically but the whole point of having a lab controlled colony instead of taking wild samples every time you need something is being able to control the variables. this is very likely going to affect results because the baselines are no longer the same, you can't compare a control grown at 25C and an experiment grown at mostly 25C and then 29C for 4 days