Residents of five North Hill dorms experienced water outages Thursday afternoon after a pipe break forced repair crews to shut down water to the community.
By 6 p.m., Facilities Management had determined generally where the break was and restored hot water to Anne Arundel, Dorchester, St. Mary’s, and Queen Anne’s halls, according to an email to the North Hill community. Facilities Management could not restore hot water in one dorm, Somerset Hall, because the pipe is close to a high voltage line and workers had not yet found the exact location of the break.
“Facilities Management staff are continuing to work on this issue throughout this afternoon and evening,” the email stated.
Before staff could turn the water back on in the other four dorms, they had to inspect each bathroom in the dorms and enter every apartment in St. Mary’s hall to make sure water wasn’t running. Somerset residents will have to wait a little longer, as there’s no timeline for turning on the dorm’s hot water.
“It might take them through the night and into tomorrow morning,” said Carlo Colella, Facilities Management associate vice president. “To be conservative, probably hot water will be restored tomorrow, hopefully sooner.
Despite the department’s suggestion that residents take hot showers at the Eppley Recreation Center, many students said they weren’t willing to take that step.
“I’m kind of annoyed because I need to shower, but I don’t want to walk to Ritchie or Eppley,” said Somerset Hall resident Maggie Doran, a freshman English and communications major.
Though the dorm has cold water, resident Alexandra Gizan said the pressure is very low.
“So I guess I’ll have to deal with that,” the freshman journalism major added.
In the fall, students said they were inconvenienced by several planned water outages in South Campus Commons buildings and a slew of hours-long water outages on North Campus.
