On May 30, a fire destroyed the Lincoln Public Schools District Offices. Since then, LPS has been trying to recover in many ways, including getting its network and firewall back in place.
In the aftermath of the fire, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln quickly stepped in to help LPS piece itself together again by offering data space.
Walter Weir, chief information officer at UNL, first heard of the fire early in the morning on May 31. He called Kirk Langer, director of technology for LPS, as soon as he heard the news to offer all the help that he and his staff could.
UNL invited the LPS staff to move into Nebraska Hall where they were provided with space in UNL's data center to aid in recovery efforts.
"We are sharing needed data space," Langer said. "They provided us server hardware so we could get up and running again."
LPS has a small IT backup at North Star High School, however it did not have all the equipment LPS needed.
"Our primary data center with all of our racks of data were destroyed," Langer said. "All of our data was backed up to a location that didn't have all those racks, so we needed another place and we needed all of that equipment."
He added that UNL's invitation to move in was critical.
"We'd be a weak spine if it weren't for that right now," he said.
UNL loaned LPS four servers to use, installed circuits and provided LPS with much needed hardware and storage space. Three new security badges were also created for LPS employees to have access to the Nebraska Hall data center.
"They're up and running in our shop," Weir said.
A few high priorities UNL has helped LPS with are getting the network and firewall back in place, getting the LPS email functioning and getting its Content Management System operational.
Langer said UNL has provided a great deal of human capital that has assisted the LPS staff in a hands-on way, which he said has been critical.
"They went beyond saying help yourself and said we're going to help you," Langer said.
"Everybody just kind of chipped in," Weir said.
In a letter Weir wrote to his staff recently, he thanked everyone for all of their work, support and friendliness toward those at LPS.
"The directors and I are going to review all our disaster recovery plans to make sure we learn from this very unfortunate incident," he wrote.
LPS has just begun to get some of its backed-up computer systems running for the first time since the fire. It is estimated that there were $15 million in damages to the building and $5 million in damages to its contents. Langer said they will be in Nebraska Hall into the foreseeable future.
"We'll continue to build and add to equipment resources and partner with the university," he said. "At some point we'll work to move our stuff out of there."
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