the worst has happened.. the freezers all broke and defrosted... and have lost months of work!!!!!!!!!!! oh my god. sorry had to share that before i cry!

nooooooooooooooooooo!

I meant to add, this happened to me too. It sucked but had to get on with it - and it all worked out

I'm sure it will for you too

That sucks girlie. This happened in my lab too. I got off easy, i just lost a few spare bits of tissue samples. But other people in my group lost hundreds of pounds worth of compentent cells, cDNA libraries, hundreds of tissue samples, all sorts!

Doooooh!!! Gutted. I’ve had that happen before due to a dodgy seal which came away from the door so it didn’t close properly.

Last year someone in a group meeting said he didn’t think the fridge in our lab wasnt working(except for the light inside) A newer member of the group then announced." That hasn’t worked since I started (6 months earlier) I just thought you were using it as a cupboard to store things in"

Was/is there no freezer in a nearby lab? We've had to move stuff around the department before.
That is a really devastating thing to happen, you may be able to get a small extension on your PhD though. It is partly the nature of research that your purified protein will get lost on a column, or will get munched by proteases, and all your lab equipment will break down when you desperately need it. That's my experience anyway!
Monkey me I'm just speechless about your post, the poor PhD finding that out!

Yeah it is crap when that happens I have had that before but luckily i was in the lab when it happened so I could whisk everything from that freezer to the ultracold storage rooms before it all totally defrosted.

I used to keep duplicate samples in different freezers just in case! Sounds paranoid but it came in useful a few times!