Emily Tobias/Student LifeEliot residents found themselves wading in water after last Thursday’s power outage. Because of the several-hour blackout, fan-coil units froze and burst, leading to the flooding of some Eliot rooms and hallways.
“When the power goes out, we have circulating pumps in the building and [the power outage] stops those from circulating,” said Jim Severine, the associate director of building services for Residential Life.
Brooke Bagnall, a residential advisor on the third floor of Eliot, said she discovered the flood early Friday morning.
“I was woken up at 7 a.m. by two residents wading in the water pouring from one single room,” she said. “The water was flowing past two other doors and was actually making its way around the corner.”
Soon after residents reported the flood to Residential Life, mechanics came to fix the situation.
“We had mechanics on sight almost immediately. We had a contractor come in and cut those units out and repair them, and they were back in service later that evening,” said Severine. “We had our own housekeeping team on sight to start the initial cleanup, and we made a call into a restoration company to assist us and finish up the cleanup.”
Sophomore Juhn Song, however, was not happy with Residential Life’s response.
“I came back here the next morning, and they took my stuff, and the room was all messy,” she said. “I was so mad because they took my stuff without permission; they just broke in.”
Severine said this was done in an attempt to help students who had been inconvenienced by the flood.
“What could be laundered as far as personal items we took care of? What was damaged on a more permanent basis? We asked them to start compiling a list and submit it to us for reimbursement,” he said. “We have turned this in to the university insurance department to make an insurance claim and we have right now deductibles that we have to meet, but either way the students will be taken care of.”
Fortunately for the rest of the South 40, Eliot was the only site of such damage.
“We were extremely lucky that there weren’t any other freeze-ups,” said Severine. “Had it been much longer of duration of an outage, we would have had many more problems.”