The University of Hawaii finally emailed employees this afternoon about Sunday’s fire on Lower Campus Road that caused about $600,000 in damage, including some people’s offices.

It was the first official communication about the fire from the school’s central administration, says a UH employee. She was instructed by the director of the financial management office not to come to work today because her office was in the building affected by the fire, but received no official email from the administration until about 1 p.m., she said.

UH hasn’t posted any press releases or news alerts about the fire to its website or even its Twitter feed.

This employee learned more from the local news coverage than she did from UH, she said.

UPDATE 3:40 P.M.: UH spokeswoman Lynne Waters clarified that student and payroll records are stored on digital servers and were not affected.

The bottom line is that the damage and loss of documents or information is not nearly as severe as has been reported. We are grateful for that and grateful that no one was injured in this fire and we have the fine work of HFD to thank for that. We are waiting for the fire department to completely contain and extinguish the fire so they can enter the building and bring out materials for UH staff to assess, sort, and retrieve whatever can be salvaged.