Steps to Address Pipe Burst Damage Scheduled to End

After the Jan. 24 pipe burst near the Narragansett entrance caused Wright’s main campus to shut down for 2 days, steps were taken to tackle the damage, which affected the first floor of the LRC, arts building and events building.

Anna-Marie Morales, interim vice president of finance and operations,said, “What we are doing now is just ensuring that the floors are dried out, any electricity that was wet we have a company coming in to fix some of those issues. To get us up and running I just had to assess every single room in this campus to ensure we got every area that was wet.”

President Oroz said all the fans, dehumidifiers, and plastic pipes would be removed and the records department would reopen by Friday. On Friday, based on firsthand observations, the large yellow plastic tubes were removed from the Narragansett entrance.

Industrial Design major Leioy Guerrero said about the pipe burst, “It did not really have any effect. I guess it’s just kind of harder to find a place to sit with everything that's blocked.” Guerrero said the one impact the pipe burst had for her is that she usually enters Wright at the Narragansett entrance, which was closed all week.

This comes as more details have come out about the pipe burst and the extent of the damage. Morales said, “The chief engineer Luis Guerrero was able to isolate the incident. What happened was a pipe froze right above campus center where the revolving doors were and it shot out upwards of 200 gallons per minute of water and it was going in multiple directions.”

Morales shared what went into the decision of when to reopen school. “We just wanted to make sure prior to bringing anyone back on campus that it was safe. We felt safe as of Tuesday but we allowed one extra day to just make sure we moved everyone logistically staffwise so that it didn’t impact student services.”

Morales also shared that in addition to the LRC and arts building damage, the carpet at the main entrance of the theater, the box office and the union office on the first floor of the events building sustained water damage due to the pipe burst.

Due to the closure, multiple departments across the school were forced to adapt. Laurie Alfaro, the president of Faculty Council and the chair of the CIS department, said about the pipe burst, "The big issue was the first floor of the learning center and that’s where all our computer labs were.”

The CIS classes normally held in the LRC pivoted to some of the computer labs in the arts and science building. Cybersecurity major Lala Moreno said his CIS 103 course in the LRC was moved to the second floor of the science building. Alfaro said “We also have our net tech lab and our cybersecurity lab that have been kind of underutilized so we’re also using those for our classes.”

Bridget O’Connell, the associate dean of the Center of Excellence in Engineering and Computer Science, said the pipe burst drew concern because students are working on engineering projects like building a race track in the LRC for Engineering Week and that engineering students need the space for tutoring. 

Engineering students adapted by meeting at Harold Washington College, where 15 engineering students gathered when Wright was closed. 

O’Connell said, “Our students really value being in person and I think it was really heartening to see that some were willing to come. Even though only a few students were asked to come to Harold, a handful more followed them 'cause they just really like being together.”

As Wright tries to get back to normal operations Alfaro praised the IT team for staying late and over the weekend to get Wright reopened. “We really appreciate their efforts to keep things moving so we only had to cancel the 2 days as opposed to a longer period,” Alfaro said. “So really they've been troopers.”

Parts of the LRC were closed Wednesday when students came back to Wright. Photo Credit: Kyle Chmielowski.