“The night of the infamous blizzard… There was a sprinkler malfunction and our room was flooding. Eventually, after about an hour and a half they let us back into our room… we walked in and there was probably about an inch and a half or two of water.” said junior Simon Yoder, a third floor resident of the Hillside Apartments. Yoder and his apartment mates were watching TV around midnight that Saturday, Jan. 24, when a sprinkler head on the third floor froze and burst due to the extreme cold. Water began to fill the halls and rooms on the east end of Hillside just as the much anticipated snow storm started. Upon sensing a loss of pressure in the sprinkler system, the building’s fire panel automatically triggered the alarm system, immediately alerting the Harrisonburg Fire Department.
Across campus, David Robey, Director of Facilities Management, had just turned in for the night on an air mattress in his office. He and other members of the facilities team had made the call to stay on campus in order to get an early start clearing snowfall the next morning. Their plans changed dramatically once they received news of the ensuing flood in Hillside. Robey immediately met up with colleague Mike Stellwag and Housing personnel in the residence hall to figure out next steps. Their first course of action: getting all the affected residents evacuated in order for the fire department to get in and shut the whole system down.
“They were like, pack your bags for one or two days. Then one of the [Community Advisors] (CAs) in the background was mouthing to us, ‘pack for four or five days,’” said Yoder. Over the course of the next two hours, it was all hands on deck to get everyone into temporary housing in Northlawn. Overseeing the whole operation was Associate Dean of Campus Life, Allan Clay Jr., who directed communication in the proceeding days between the displaced residents, facilities, housing, and SERVPRO, the company contracted to carry out remediation work. SERVPRO was given five days to get the affected areas as dry as possible so that students could move back in Thursday evening of that week.
Another step that the university took to amend the situation was offering compensation to students for any damage to belongings that may have come about due to the flooding. Students were informed that video footage was taken of their apartments so that damage claims could be verified. Isaac Miller, a junior resident in Hillside, asked to see the video to make sure it accurately captured the situation. Miller was then added to an email chain which, in addition to the requested images of the rooms, contained prior correspondence between facilities and SERVPRO that concerned him. Coming from SERVPRO’s Office Manager, “Due to the affected materials not being removed and not meeting drying standards, most likely there will be microbial growth in the near future due to not being able to do the proper demo needed to mitigate” (Courtesy of Isaac Miller).
“The first thought that comes in my head is, ‘am I okay to be in here?’ I understand that the company might be saying that to cover themselves… but I mean, you don’t want to hear that there might be mold in your apartment” said Miller. Administration was receptive to these fears around potential mold growth, and addressed them in an email to The Weather Vane.
“External remediation recommendations were reviewed carefully and confirmed that there was no immediate health or safety risk. Based on that assessment, Facilities determined that continued monitoring is appropriate in the short term” said EMU Chief Operating Officer, Shawn Ramer.
While this flood may have presented the biggest risk it was not the only issue that the aging residence hall has seen this year. Jacob Dwyer, a CA for Hillside, said that they have also had issues with their fire system, hot water, and heating. In reference to a fire panel in the building, Dwyer said, “that’s been beeping for weeks. There’s a resident who shares a wall with it in his bedroom and he complains about it every day to me.”
On Tuesday Hillside lost heating, with Dwyer saying, “our room got down to 58 [degrees], I think, was the lowest. And at that point, we lost the hot water, too… but the hot water came back on Thursday at night but it didn’t heat up until Friday morning.” HVAC issues are nothing new to Hillside, with Dwyer mentioning issues that the building has had with staying cool in the summer and early fall.
The desire for more updated residence halls is reflected in a recent survey of student satisfaction in important areas. Living conditions in residence halls were deemed as very important by over 80% of respondents yet roughly only 30% said they were satisfied with the quality.
“EMU recognizes that housing conditions are a significant factor in student satisfaction. Incidents like this reinforce the importance of addressing deferred maintenance in a strategic and sustainable way. Immediate responses are paired with longer-term planning for residence hall improvements, informed by student feedback and the realities of maintaining an aging campus,” said Ramer in his statement.
Ramer was not the only EMU staff member in support of renovations to the residence buildings. Clay Jr. said, “With this administration that we have now, their plans are to try to help renovate those [buildings] when that time best presents itself. Hillside, obviously, that’s got moved up because of [what is] going on there right now.” Clay Jr. reiterated that Hillside is safe for current residents but made his desire to renovate for future students clear. “In the summer, in order to prevent people next year from having issues, some stuff does need to happen. So they say we’re going to do it in summer. We’re going to get it done. And in terms of the big old, the big structural, big reconstruction, big renovation things, I want to keep continuing advocating for those.”
