A fan caught fire in the Williams Performing Arts Center late Tuesday night, leading to more flooding after a pipe burst earlier this week.
Late Tuesday night, one of the dehumidifiers caught fire. The dehumidifier was there to help dry instruments from a burst pipe that flooded the practice rooms and instrument storage rooms on Sunday. Although the fire did not directly hurt anything, it caused a sprinkler to go off, leading to more water damage.
Early Sunday morning, ACUPD was doing a routine walk-through of the WPAC when they discovered some water on the second floor. They then contacted facilities, who learned a pipe had burst on the third floor, said Kevin Campbell, senior vice president for operations.
When people heard about the flooding, faculty members and students from the music and theater departments came to help move and dry any instruments that may have been damaged, Campbell said.
“Once we got word, crews were on site to one: make the repairs and two: to clean up,” he said. “[They] came in to try and help get as many of the instruments dry as quickly as we could, get them out of the high humidity areas.”
At this time, it is still unclear how much damage was done by the flooding. Faculty, students and maintenance crews are hoping to save as many of the instruments as possible, which belong to the school, professors and students.
Campbell said the pipe that broke was installed when the building was built and was expected to last much longer than it did.
“[The WPAC] was built in 2002,” Campbell said. “We would not expect to have a metal pipe basically give out at this stage, less than 25 years into its life. I don’t know off the top of my head that was supposed to be a 40-year pipe, but definitely would not expect pipes like that to give out after 23 years.”
Dr. Matt Roberson, associate professor of musicology, said everyone has come together to try to get any instruments away from the water.
“A bunch of people came up here Sunday and started moving instruments to a dry place,” Roberson said. “For example, my office is full of percussion instruments… it was a great team effort to try and save everything.”
He said, to help the building dry, the company Service Master was hired and has placed fans alongside makeshift vents to help pull moisture from inside to outside.
“Initially, we thought that things could be fairly back to normal in just a few days,” Roberson said. “But then with the event [Tuesday] night, I don’t really have an update on how long it’s going to take.”
So far, a few events have already been affected, with a few classes cancelled, and a percussion concert was moved to the Boone Family Theatre.
This is not the only flooding issue on campus this week. On Monday morning, an air valve corroded outside the back of Hardin Administration, leading to more minor flooding there. Campbell said that the valve is connected to the main loop line that provides all of the hot water across campus.
“Again, that was installed in 2008,” Campbell said. “So that absolutely should be lasting much longer than it is right now, but we’ve had a couple of those failures.”
Campbell said that the school is working to make all of these repairs as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to students. Most of the repairs will be made during off-hours and over the weekend, but there are some disruptions to hot water that are to be expected.
