On a cold winter day in February, in the heart of a demanding semester of study, Bluefield College students found themselves just trying to keep their heads above water—literally.
That day, Feb. 7, not only BC students, but also faculty and staff discovered in the wee hours of the morning 3,000 gallons of water spilled inside the school's Shott Hall from a ruptured pipe in the building's sprinkler system.
The ceiling section in Bluefield College's Shott Hall where a ruptured sprinkler system pipe poured 3,000 gallons of water into the building.
Discovered first by campus safety director Kevin Rolen at approximately 5 a.m. during his typical rounds on campus, the water, which had rushed from the broken pipe in Shott Hall's ceiling at a rate of about 90 gallons per second, had reached every room in the building, which houses the school's dining hall, student activities center and bookstore.
“There was about two inches of water everywhere,” said Blair Taylor, BC's director of maintenance, who shut off the water supply to Shott Hall after receiving the emergency call from Rolen. “It looks like the cold weather froze some water that was trapped in a pipe in the sprinkler system.
“When that water thawed in the early hours of the morning, the pressure from the release was just too much for the pipe to withstand, and it broke.”
And out came thousands of gallons of water that damaged a section of the ceiling in the dining hall, carpet in the student activities center and two conference rooms, and a portion of inventory in the bookstore. In addition to minor damage in other rooms in the building, the water soaked floors and baseboards and everything within its reach, leaving BC officials with a massive cleanup, restoration and relocation project.
“We assured the students that we were going to work quickly to bring the situation in Shott Hall back to normal,” said Jerold Meadows, BC's vice president for administration and finance. “We appreciate their patience and cooperation.”
After quickly using its own maintenance and housekeeping staff, along with volunteers from the staffs of food services and student services, to begin removing the water and cleaning up the facilities, the college hired professional contractors who deal with flooded facilities to finish the dry-out process. The school also employed contractors for the repair projects.
During the initial recovery phase, students were relocated to the Student Activities Center and the Science Center for meals. Just a few short days later after rooms were determined to be dry and sanitized, the students were allowed to return and to have full access to the building. Only a small section of the dining hall, where the pipeline fracture and the most significant damage occurred, is still off limits while contractors repair the sprinkler system and that portion of the ceiling.