Fire in Almere brings UU to a standstill

THURSDAY, 7 MAY

It is around 9:00 am on Thursday morning when members of the DUB editorial team realise they can’t enter their office in the Administration Building. The lock does not open when we hold our passes in front of it. Other employees have the same problem, and rumours of a hack at the company responsible for the electronic locks begin circulating in the corridors. Meanwhile, DUB’s WhatsApp group buzzes with message after message from editorial members working from home, saying that both the DUB website and the Intranet are down.

Soon, we discover that the entire university has been affected by doors that won’t open and websites that have gone offline. The cause seems to lie in Almere, where a major fire is raging in a data centre that houses many of UU’s servers. This led to disruptions in many digital systems, not just at UU.

Around noon, the university announces on its website that it is experiencing login issues and other system problems. Students and staff are advised not to log off, as they will not be able to log in again.

Students under stress
In the afternoon, we visit the Ruppert Building, at Utrecht Science Park, to assess the impact of this unexpected situation. We bump into Kira and Malie, two Interdisciplinary Social Sciences students who have just finished a seminar in which students were supposed to give presentations, but some were unable to access their slides and notes. “The lecturer was very stressed out,” they say. In the end, the session could go on, albeit only with the presentations of students who didn’t experience any technical issues.

We then meet two Biomedical Sciences students discussing their exam near the exam room in the Educatorium. They didn’t know whether the exam would go ahead until right before it. “The situation was particularly unpleasant for the students who must travel by train to come to Utrecht.”

According to these two students, some of their peers did not have access to Brightspace, which was also a problem. “All the material is on there: literature, practice exams, formula sheet. I tried to access the recording of a lecture through my search history, but it didn’t work.”

Computer science lecturer Maarten Löffler has just given a lecture in the Ruppert building. He had a bit of trouble downloading his slides, but managed to do it in the end thanks to a workaround. He also had difficulty communicating with teaching assistants in another room during a seminar earlier that morning, as they couldn’t log in to Teams. “In the end, we communicated via WhatsApp.”

At 5.40 pm, UU announces that its buildings will remain closed on Friday and all classes will be cancelled. That’s because access authentication through the campus card automatically expires after working hours, so the workspaces may no longer be accessible.

Furthermore, the university urges staff not to log in to UU sites on Friday to relieve the strain on the systems.

Photo: DUB

FRIDAY, 8 MAY
We make another round of the university’s buildings on Friday morning, and discover that not everyone is aware that UU is closed. We meet Mariana and Charly, two Master’s students in Science & Business Management, on an otherwise empty Drift. They took a 40-minute bus ride only to find the library door closed. Haihan, a PhD candidate, also has to look for another place to work: “There goes my working day.”

Several UU students appear to have sought refuge in the Public Library on Neude Square, which is already very busy due to the final exams for secondary school. Anna (23) and Mare (22), two Bachelor’s students in History and Sociology, respectively, are sitting on the library’s steps on the ground floor. They’ve got a hangover from a night out on Thursday evening. Anna is missing her seminar for the third time due to the disruption to UU’s systems. “That’s a shame,” she says. Mare thinks it’s funny: “It’s our own fault, you know”. “Yeah, right,” replies Anna. “Nobody expected that thing to go up in flames.”

It’s unbelievable, but true: suddenly, a fire alarm sounds in the Neude library, and everyone has to leave the building. Fortunately, in this case, it is a false alarm.

Photo: DUB

Meanwhile, Utrecht Science Park is completely deserted apart from the buildings of the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. The coffee shops Gutenberg and Minnaert Café are closed.

Economics student Linh An is standing at the tram stop. Her lecture has been cancelled, but she isn’t too bothered. “The teacher sent us the slides and gave us homework assignments. We can just get on with that.” Although she has an exam next week, she isn’t stressed out at all. “I expect it will all be over by then.”

Some of the exams cancelled
We also ask the students and staff on the DUB Panel how they’re experiencing this situation, and they tell us that departments and individual lecturers are taking ad hoc measures to deal with it. They also note it is Friday, a day on which fewer classes are scheduled anyway, and we are not yet at the end of the term. A total of twelve exams have been cancelled this Friday.

This does not mean no one is stressed out, of course. For instance, the graduation process for research Master’s students in Social Sciences is under pressure because students cannot access essential software. The programme decides to give them a day and a half’s reprieve, but that means lecturers will have less time to grade their work, as the defence date remains unchanged. It is not possible to postpone it, partly because many international students took the defence date into account when arranging visas and return flights.

Compliments
Students seem reasonably well informed about what is going on. The university advises them and the staff to stay tuned to the UU website for information, but it is mainly WhatsApp groups that seem to be doing the job. However, the study and information desks are also receiving more enquiries. 

A few days later, on Monday, the student members of the University Council will reportedly express appreciation for how students are being informed. The councillor Hermen Horzelenberg will even pay compliments to the Executive Board in this regard.

Back to Friday: the university is grappling with exams scheduled for after the weekend. It remains unclear to what extent all systems and websites will be working over the weekend. It is also unclear whether students will be able to properly prepare for exams, as they are not allowed to use digital systems over the weekend. To complicate matters further, it is impossible to create exams on Remindo without logging into the system.

Ultimately, UU decides to cancel all exams scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, and announce on its website on Sunday whether offices and teaching buildings will reopen on Monday.

Photo: DUB

Exams and printers
Several degree programmes have decided to hold their exams on paper. The Faculty of Social Sciences immediately implemented this change on Thursday, when the online problems arose. The Head of Student & Academic Affairs, Erlinde Rood, explains that the faculty had five short exams that day. The UU printers were offline, but people could still print files by plugging a USB stick directly into the printer.

Two more exams were scheduled for the following week. “These were so extensive that it was no longer feasible to print them on our own printers,” Rood explains a few days later. Fortunately, a copy shop can produce hundreds of printouts.

All in all, the situation makes for a great deal of extra work, says Rood. “Fortunately, we still knew a few things about how paper exams work. For example, students must receive a receipt when they hand in their exam, but we’ll also have to arrange for all those papers to be entered manually, so that Remindo can see the answers.”

Photo: DUB

SUNDAY, 10 MAY

On Sunday afternoon, UU publishes a statement on its website, saying that its buildings will reopen the following week, but it will take a while longer for all systems to be up and running again. Several websites, including DUB’s, are still down. The university primarily informs its community through its own website and social media channels, as other channels are either unavailable or unstable.

Photo: 123rf, Shutterstock, illustration by DUB

MONDAY, 11 MAY

Classes can resume with some adjustments. By no means are all systems and websites back online. The Wi-Fi in the university’s buildings is unstable, hindering various staff members in their jobs.

Additionally, there are issues with the deadlines for matching and admission emails. Many freshers must submit their matching forms, while prospective Master’s students are waiting to hear whether they have been admitted.

Problems with the educational schedule
The Department of Public Administration and Organisation Science is running into difficulties with next year’s academic planning. The guidelines for said planning are stored in an Excel file on the O Drive, and nobody can access it. “We’re realising just how dependent we are on computers – not just on big tech, but also on ordinary tech,” says one of the professors working on Bijlhouwerstraat.

For the UU researchers working in labs, however, the situation is slowly returning to normal. Things had been quite hectic in the previous week, with the announcement that all buildings would be closed on Friday coming as an unpleasant surprise.

Many questions
Many people had questions about this announcement, especially given that their faculties had communicated less than 45 minutes earlier about the conditions under which access would be permitted. Distraught researchers with ongoing experiments requiring daily attention were in a state of panic.

A few days later, however, many researchers appreciated how the crisis was handled. The university ultimately made arrangements to allow staff to access the labs when absolutely necessary. Security staff proved very helpful in many cases. “After the initial shock, everyone was reassured,” says the biologist Suzan Ruijtenberg. 

For instance, several PhD students within pharmacologist Linette Willemsen’s division were well advanced with a lab experiment. If they hadn’t worked on it that Friday, the experiment would have been lost. “Fortunately, they were eventually allowed to enter the lab under supervision.”

Experiments in danger
Some experiments had to be repeated or delayed, but looking back, the two researchers consider the damage limited. Katja Heister, Head of the Geolab at Vening Meinesz Building B, adds: “You could say it ended with a whimper. Thank goodness.”

All three praise the sense of solidarity that prevailed in the academic community, with researchers who were allowed into the lab often offering to carry out work for others.

However, some researchers are surprised that the control room in the Administration Building was unavailable for emergency alerts from the labs, both on Friday and over the weekend. Utrecht University had to call in additional security staff for this reason.

“That is the key takeaway from the past few days for me,” says Katja Heister, “You have to ensure that the control room can be up and running again quickly.”

Reports of fires, gas leaks or power cuts did not reach the control room. If an incident had occurred, the alarm would have been audible only locally, which is dangerous if no one is present or if someone hears it but assumes the control room will pick it up.

The biologist Suzan Ruijtenberg and her colleagues agree that the failure of the control room – and, consequently, the absence of a rapid route to assistance from the fire brigade or ambulance service – came as a surprise. “It is, after all, a crucial link.” Pharmacologist Linette Willemsen is more understanding. “This was such an exceptional situation, and look how quickly everything is back on track.”

PhD delayed
However, UU researchers who did not conduct laboratory work also ran into problems. Some are still facing difficulties. Computer science lecturer Nishant Saurabh reports that the IT failure is likely to delay one of his PhD students. She was due to run several experiments and simulations this week to present the results at a conference. “She may miss that deadline, and then she’ll have to approach another conference. That could easily take several months.”

Iris van der Tuin, Professor of Cultural Studies, has no access to her primary sources. These consist of the card index system of the American philosopher Susanne K. Langer, which she digitised and made searchable during the pandemic. The 32,000 cards are normally accessible via a UU URL.

The international research community working on Langer’s work is also at a loss, as a conference is scheduled for the end of May in Vienna. Its website and mailing list are hosted by UU. Van der Tuin: “There is now also a slight sense of panic in Vienna.”

Several systems seem to be back online on Monday, thanks to their redirection to other data centres, such as those in UMC Utrecht. On Monday afternoon, UU announces that all systems are likely to be available again from Wednesday on. We are now waiting for the power restoration work in Almere, which has been delayed while waiting for a crucial component.

TUESDAY, 12 MAY

The servers in Almere are expected to return on Wednesday. Students and staff are asked not to log in from 5:00 pm on Wednesday to ensure the restart goes as smoothly as possible. That advice could well remain in place for a few days.

WEDNESDAY, 13 MAY

This is the last day of working and studying this week, as Utrecht University will be closed for Ascension Day on Thursday and the following Friday. But not everyone has the day off. The ICT team will be working as usual over the weekend because this is the moment of truth. Will all systems work as usual? Has any data been lost?

THURSDAY, 14 MAY
Many sites that had been offline all week, including DUB and Studium Generale, are back. In this editorial, DUB's editor-in-chief recollects how the situation affected the DUB newsroom.

Patient care
Research and teaching were not the only things that have to keep running at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Patient care and animal care must continue as usual, too. The emergency clinic, which is open 24/7, must remain open.

“When the Internet suddenly went down, the website of the veterinary hospital also went offline,” said the faculty’s press officer, Maarten Post, on Tuesday. “That was obviously not ideal, because it meant pet owners and vets didn’t know if the clinic was still open, and the phone number and address weren’t visible. We quickly added that information to our tab on the university website, which was still accessible.”

The faculty also had to check whether the calendar showing client appointments was accessible. According to Post, the calendar wouldn’t start on some computers, but fortunately, it was already open on several others before the servers were shut down. 

The electronic keys for the doors were still working on Thursday at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, as they run on a different server. As a result, teaching and exams could go on in this faculty, as could much of the research and patient care. However, various systems were unavailable or only partially available, including those used in diagnostic laboratories.

Results had to be processed partly by hand, and vets who had requested tests were no longer automatically notified of the results. These now have to be emailed or phoned through.

Despite the problems, Post says the atmosphere was good. “Everyone got together and worked incredibly hard to keep the faculty running, with the main priority being that the animals could receive the care they needed.”

SUNDAY, 17 MAY

UU reports that the system recovery went well. Almost everything is working again, marking the end of a memorable week and a half.

MONDAY, 18 MAY
At the University Council meeting, UU Vice-President Margot van der Starre, who led the crisis team over the past week, reports that she is still receiving hourly updates from IT on how the systems are performing. Not everything is working at 100 per cent capacity yet. However, she praises the IT staff for their efforts. The subsequent evaluation will examine whether the priority list for system start-up needs to be adjusted and whether DUB’s position on that list was correct.

Cause remains unknown for the time being
Enquiries regarding the cause of the fire, made to the police, the fire service and NorthC, the company where the fire broke out, have yielded no results so far. The police say that the investigation is ongoing, while a spokesperson for NorthC states the following: "No further information is available at this stage. We have not yet been able to conduct a technical investigation into the fire, as the area where it occurred is not accessible to the experts investigating the matter." However, a tactical investigation involving staff interviews has been conducted. This has not yet yielded any results either.