Flood closes front entrance to High Rise North for hours

As the "rain" in the High Rise North lobby slowed to a gentle drizzle yesterday afternoon, a 10th-floor resident, armed with a can of E-Z Cheez and some crackers, returned to her room. A burst pipe behind the toilet in HRN room 202 caused water to flood the floor and seep through the first-floor offices down to the lobby. "This is what I had in my hand when the bell started ringing," said the student as an hour-long evacuation of the building ended. "And they didn't tell us [the flood] didn't affect the upper floors." The flood damage was limited to the lower floors of the building. Pools of water accumulated on the lobby floor as a few ceiling tiles fell and someone set out a trash can in a futile attempt to catch some of the water. The front doors of HRN were closed for hours, and people seeking entrance to the building were dismayed to find their lobby soaked. "I think I'm really gonna cry," said one student, upon realizing she had to enter through the back door. But the HRN staff remained calm. At approximately 4 p.m., about 70 minutes after the pipe burst, Physical Plant worker Howell Chadwick, wet-vac in hand, had already assured students that the worst was over. College sophomore Jason Zoldessy, who lives in HRN room 204, showed no signs of distress. "[Howell's] been vacuuming for an hour now, he's working hard," Zoldessy said. Meanwhile, other staff members attended to the problems downstairs. "It's been an exciting day," a front desk worker said. "I'm like, incident report -- great. But the response was good." And while the "storm" was quite a spectacle, staffers emphasized that it was not as damaging as it looked. "It only looks this bad because it's in the lobby," said one. "But at least student rooms aren't being drastically affected -- besides the ones on the second floor." Dormitory floods "don't happen that much," according to Chadwick, and it is especially rare that everyone knows about it. But while yesterday's incident was quite visible, its effects paled in comparison to last year's repeated flooding in the basement of the Quadrangle's Speakman dormitory. The Quad floods last April, which one student compared to "the 10 plagues of Passover," covered the hall floors with brown sludge. One incident did not receive a response from residential maintenance for five hours. Students do not live in that hall of Speakman anymore due to its repeated problems with mice and flooding.

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