Varian rotary vane pump lost all its oil through exhaust?

over the weekend I had a vacuum system fail on me.
In a nutshell, from high to low vac:

vac chamber > turbo pump > electronic safety valve > foreline trap >
rotary pump > oil mist filter > exhaust hose


There were no power surges.

It looks to me like the safety valve overheated and failed.
This introduces a small air leak so the system can slowly vent.

The rotary pump spewed out all it's oil through the exhaust. The
filter was full, dripping and there's a puddle on the floor. The RVP
is almost completely empty.
I can't fathom what sort of failure could cause this.

I checked the exhaust filter for little bits of material (to see if
something crumbled inside the pump) but it was clean except for the
oil.

Is there a problem is these pumps are not perfectly level? I can't see
how that would cause this... but that's all I've got right now... it's
not that far off level...

Any ideas? Thanks everybody!
.

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