Harnwell pipe bursts, causes water damage

A number of Harnwell College House residents have reported uncomfortably moist living conditions recently -- and some are missing parts of their ceiling.

A pipe in the high rise dormitory burst yesterday afternoon, causing serious water damage to rooms on the 23rd and 24th floors and affecting residents living as far down as the 12th.

College senior Lisa Jablonski, who was working at the information center in Harnwell yesterday afternoon, confirmed that "there's a burst pipe, and water is leaking from the 24th to the 12th floor in the 14 and the 16 rooms."

Building manager Frank Sistrunk, responsible for Harnwell, refused to comment yesterday on the burst pipe or how it happened.

Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik did not return repeated phone calls for comment last night.

College senior Daphnee Jean-Francois, who was working at Harnwell's information center last night, said she believed that the residents in one room on the 24th floor were relocated, and that students living in the two adjacent rooms may also have been evacuated.

"We had water in our common room, but that was basically it," College sophomore and 24th floor Harnwell resident Neha Gupta said. Facilities Services "just used a water vacuum and cleared it up."

Gupta noted that she was lucky, given that her next-door neighbor is missing parts of his ceiling.

Harnwell's Faculty Master David Brownlee, who lives on the 23rd floor of the high rise, said that his home hadn't sustained any damage at all.

"I heard that there was a leak, and that they're working on it," he said.

"I think it's a pretty vertical column... water falls vertically," Brownlee added.

A number of residents not in the path of the latest leak reported water damage left over from last week's hurricane.

"All underneath where my bed was is wet," College sophomore Janelle Pakish said.

Though Pakish put a maintenance request in the day after the hurricane, "No one ever showed up -- it just dried on its own."

Graduate Associate and Wharton doctoral candidate in Marketing David Schweidel described his 22nd floor apartment's water damage.

"Mine is by the window, where the window meets the ceiling," he said. "It's from two days ago, when we had that storm in the morning."

According to Schweidel, "their system is, 'we've got to wait for it to dry for them to do anything.'"

Facilities teams were working around the building last night to repair water damage.

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