Dozens of summer classes were relocated on Monday after a pipe burst in Dodd Hall over the weekend, flooding the first and second floors and basement of the building.

 

The second-floor pipe is believed to have burst around 8 a.m. Sunday, flowing undiscovered until a professor came in to do some weekend work around 12:30 p.m., said Leroy Sisneros, director of maintenance and alterations in Facilities Management, which is coordinating the repair response at Dodd. The professor called a help line, allowing an engineer to shut off the water until a plumber could fix the pipe later that day.

 

"When the professor walked in the building, it was completely full of water, not only coming down the stairwell but also dripping through the ceiling," Sisneros said.

 

Water rose 4-5 inches deep on the second floor, rushing down staircases and seeping through the first-floor ceiling. About 15 classrooms and 40 offices were affected, with the flooding damaging ceiling tiles, carpets, chairs, books and electrical equipment from projectors to office computers. Dodd Hall was closed to students Monday as clean-up crews attempted to dry the building out and assess the damage. Staff and faculty were allowed in to examine their offices. A rare-book library in the basement was undamaged, Sisneros said.

 

"By Sunday night I had about 30 people here extracting water and setting up fans and dehumidifiers," Sisneros said. "We're continuing that today and cleaning the carpets and the cloth seats in the classrooms. Some of the carpets we had to pull out, and in some areas the water was sopping into the drywall and leeching up, so we had to cut out the dry wall. As a precaution, I've cancelled classes in these rooms for the next two weeks."

 

The Registrar's Office and Summer Sessions scrambled on Sunday to reassign Monday classes to usable rooms, moving about 900 students studying everything from management to philosophy into Bunche Hall, Royce Hall and the Public Affairs Building, said Kathleen Micham, publications manager in the Summer Sessions department. As many as 2,000 students could ultimately be affected as new classrooms are assigned for courses meeting later in the week, Micham said.

 

"They've done really fast work arranging new classrooms, and so far we've been able to find classrooms for everyone," Micham said. "No one's in, say, the main auditorium of Royce Hall."

 

Doug Thomson, the supervisor in charge of scheduling in the Registrar's Office, was among those who spent Sunday evening reorganizing classroom locations. He e-mailed professors their new classroom assignments, and the same information was added to the online catalog. Students can also find their new locations if they try to go to Dodd Hall.

 

"It's all closed, except to people who work there," Thomson said. "There are notes posted on the doors saying where to go."

 

Several departments were affected, including offices from the Center for Latin American Studies, the School of Law, the Department of Art History, and the Office of Instructional Development.

 

A 1-inch copper pipe inside a second-floor women's restroom was the culprit, Sisneros said. The pipe had been capped several years ago during a renovation, but the cap deteriorated and blew out, he explained.

 

"I'm going to every single restroom where it looks there was similar remodeling and checking all those pipes," Sisneros said. It's too early to estimate the cost of the damage, he said, but predicts it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars.