This weekend’s rainstorm, which sparked flood warnings in Prince George’s, Anne Arundel and Montgomery Counties, flooded houses, the campus and even roads on the way to a popular concert.
Students and faculty were left with a soggy mess yesterday, trying to clean up basements and offices amidst the rest of their end-of-the-semester work.
Mister Flood, a flood restoration service that works throughout the Washington area, said it received more than 500 calls between Sunday night and Monday afternoon. An overwhelmed line operator abruptly explained that he didn’t have time to answer questions about the flood.
“This is an emergency line; I have no time,” he said before hurrying off the phone.
Flood Squad, a similar business, said it had 25 or 30 reported calls in College Park and more than 300 in the Washington area. Most customers reported that water had leaked into their basements through old and cracked foundations, Flood Squad employee Steve Hittelman said.
Geoffrey Ramsay, a junior logistics major, said his roommate woke him up at 2 a.m. Monday after discovering half-an-inch of water in his basement apartment on Berwyn Road. Several basement-level rooms, including the bathroom, kitchen, living room and three bedrooms, all suffered damage.
“We tried a Shop-Vac to get the water up, but in five minutes, the water was back to the same level,” he said, adding he and his housemates could not figure out where the water was coming from.
University staff encountered similar flooding problems on the campus.
Loc Hoang, the IT director for the college of agricultural and natural resources, said his Symons Hall office was flooded once again, even though Facilities Management has been trying all semester to find ways to ward off flood water, as previously reported in The Diamondback. Facilities workers had already started removing the water that had seeped through the basement when Hoang arrived on Monday morning.
Hoang said that although the leaks earlier in the semester had been contained to his office suite, this weekend’s flood spread to the two offices next to his. Humidifiers were placed along Hoang’s office wall, and Hoang said he raised the electrical cords off the ground so he “doesn’t get electrocuted.”
But College Park floods weren’t the only ones causing headaches for students Sunday night. The Radiohead concert at Nissan Pavilion was disrupted by floodwaters, which closed several roads leading to the venue and caused many students who had purchased tickets to miss the show. Traffic backed up in and around Nissan Pavilion’s grounds, and police officers eventually began turning drivers around because they weren’t going to be able to get through the gates and park in time to see the show.
Matt Sriram, a junior finance major, said he spent four-and-a-half hours in his car and never actually made it to Nissan Pavilion on Sunday night. Sriram said it only took him two hours when he went to Nissan last summer.
“The rain just f—ed it all up,” Sriram said. “I was so bummed out. It was very disappointing.”
Sriram said he had never heard Radiohead before, and bought the tickets two months ahead of time. It is unclear whether the $75 tickets will be refunded – Radiohead issued a statement on their website thanking the fans that showed up for the show, but gave no indication as to whether fans will receive reimbursement – so Sriram and three friends are going to go to a Radiohead concert in San Francisco instead.
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