Islamabad-Fire broke out in the Bioinformatics laboratory of Comsats University reducing to ashes millions of rupees worth of equipment and the research work, said an official on Monday. Details said the fire destroyed around seventy highly advance computers and research data of 10 scientists and more than 80 students. An official said that the bioinformatics lab suffered a damage of more than Rs10million because of the incident.

The official also informed The Nation that the fire alarms at the highly sensitive lab were found out of order. The official stated that the incident occurred on Saturday while the cause behind fire eruption was found to be short-circuiting at initial level investigations.

“The fire alarm system was not working which led to expansion of fire,” said the official. The official said that the fire was contained in the lab of Bioinformatics and no other property was damaged, but the lab itself faced was completely destroyed as all the equipment was turned to ashes.

Soon after the incident, the university security reached the location and used fire extinguishers to try and eliminate the fire. The official said that no human injury was reported as a result of the incident as the incident that took place on weekend.

The authorities initially dubbed the reason behind the incident to be short-circuiting; however the final cause has not been determined yet.

The official said that the fire engulfed the lab due to alleged negligence of the administration as it had not checked the emergency system.

A scientist at COMSATS informed The Nation that such incidents causes severe damage to the research work as all the efforts of the students are lost.

“We do research work day and night and incidents like this reduce our hopes and efforts also,” said the scientist.

He added that the fire alarms had been dysfunctional for at-least six months. He also added that the administration should pay attention to providing greater secure systems in the highly sensitive labs.

Registrar Comsats Univeristy Dr. Faheem Qureshi talking to The Nation said that the fire in the computer lab of bioinformatics was confined to that particular room only. Registrar also said that fire alarms were installed at lab however they didn’t work.