Some Quinnipiac University students are still displaced more than two weeks after a burst sprinkler caused severe flooding in the Mountainview Residence Hall.
On Jan. 17, three days before spring 2024 move-in was scheduled to begin, a burst sprinkler caused flooding on the second and third floors of the first-year residence hall. Thomas Rouse, director of residential life, confirmed in a Jan. 30 email statement to The Chronicle that six suites were affected by water damage.
SERVPRO, a water damage restoration service, is working with the university’s facilities staff to address the damage. Rouse said it is still unclear why the sprinkler burst.
Kennedy Darko, an international student who moved back into his suite earlier than most, was in his third-floor dorm room when the sprinkler burst.
“I don’t know how it happened,” the first-year biology major from Ghana said. “My back was facing where the sprinkler had to have burst. All I could remember was the back of my hoodie got all wet all of a sudden, and I saw smoke coming out and all I could do was run. It seemed so strange to me.”
The extent of the flooding in Darko’s room forced Quinnipiac officials to temporarily relocate him and his roommates to a repurposed study room in Dana English Residence Hall. As of Feb. 3, they were allowed to move back into their Mountainview suite.
Pictures and videos of the damage quickly flooded the Quinnipiac 2027 student Snapchat story hours after the flood occurred, which is how some of the affected students learned what had happened.
“I didn’t hear anything about it other than the Snapchat story for like two days,” said first-year marketing major Violet McCarthy, whose third-floor suite was also affected by the flooding.
Her suitemate, first-year 3+1 journalism major Evangeline Crossley, said their suite “wasn’t as affected” as some of the others.
“All our room had was a layer of water which led to our carpet being gone,” Crossley said. “They moved a lot of our stuff onto our beds when the ground was damaged, which was a little weird because it still had water damage.”
In a Jan. 25 email to the affected Mountainview Residence Hall residents, the Office of Housing wrote that Travelers, the university’s insurance company, was still determining “whether any personal belongings that were damaged will be covered by the university’s insurance policy.”
“The Office of Housing, under the supervision of Director Mark DeVilbiss, is working closely with the impacted students, providing them with regular updates and offering opportunities to inventory their possessions that were left in the impacted suites over the winter break,” Rouse wrote in a Jan. 30 email to The Chronicle. “At this time, we are unable to provide specific information about the extent of the damage.”
Crossley said Travelers representatives came to inspect her suite and gather photos of the damage on Jan. 29.
She also said that she and her roommates have not received any additional information about potential reimbursements and had already purchased new items themselves instead.
“It looked like my laptop, my Kindle, my Airpods, my sound speaker, everything got ruined,” Darko said. “I bought my laptop like three days before I relocated to the U.S.”
Darko, like Crossley and McCarthy, said he hasn’t “heard anything from anyone” about receiving reimbursements for his damaged property.
Before move-in, the Office of Housing regularly updated all affected residents on the statuses of their dorms.
In some of the flooded suites, the water damage destroyed walls to the point that officials had to tear them down and rebuild them.
Since the water damage in their rooms only affected the carpet, Crossley and McCarthy received two separate emails confirming that their suite could move back in at 3 p.m. on Jan. 21. However, delays in the restoration process ultimately prevented their suite from moving in until 5 p.m.
“Most of us were already here so that was annoying,” Crossley said.
