Students activated a fire sprinkler in their dorm room on the 12th floor of the Charles St. Building of Charles Commons, which led to flooding and an evacuation on Sunday, Sept. 4. The Housing Office has not clarified the cause of the incident.
Students living in the building were not allowed into their rooms Sunday afternoon and evening. Twelve students have been temporarily relocated to alternative on-campus housing while their rooms in Charles Commons are repaired.
Director of Housing and Operations Tracey Angel described how the University has been responding to the emergency.
“Maintenance and custodial staffs, Housing and Residential Life staff responded. PBI Restoration Resources was called in to respond to the water and related damage right away, per our normal protocol. The work continued until very early Monday morning,” Angel wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “The cost of damages has not been determined yet, as work continues to restore the spaces to normal... [W]e take the information we learn and use it to make changes to improve for the future.”
Sophomore Emily Tatum was one of the twelve students who was moved out of Charles Commons. She is currently sharing a single in AMR I with one of her suitemates. Tatum expressed disappointment with the way the University handled her suite’s clean-up and relocation.
“Mostly it was just the floors that were soaked and there was one section of my wall that was really wet. But when they put the fans in, they took all of our wet stuff and put it onto our dry beds. That made our mattresses and sheets, which we were going to take to new beds, completely wet. And because they had to move everything around, my room was totally disorganized,” Tatum said.
Another relocated student, sophomore Tess DeBerry also was upset with her temporry accommodations.
“My three roommates and I were given a single in Wolman without bedding. Yes, four of us in a single,” DeBerry wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “[When] we were allowed to finally go upstairs and see the damage to our rooms, our rooms were torn apart: shoes, clothes and decorations ruined.”
In the 48 hours following Sunday’s flood, Tatum said that Housing did not reach out to her or her suitemates. They ended up going to the offices to speak directly with Housing staff after not being offered fans or linens.
“I was trying to be patient the first night even though the University didn’t send out an email, and I wasn’t allowed in my room for eight hours,” Tatum said. “It was like they were trying to hide it from us and keep us from telling other people until they could control the situation. Everything that worked out for us this weekend was all because of friends and RAs who genuinely cared. The University’s reaction really didn’t make it look like they cared.”
Like Tatum, sophomore Kevin Shen has also been relocated due to the damage to his dorm. He and his three other roommates were moved to rooms in Bradford, Charles Commons and Homewood. His suite in Charles Commons has multiple industrial fans to dry the wet carpets.
Several holes have been drilled into the walls to release water. Shen is living in a Homewood efficiency which he described as unclean, citing cockroaches in the bathroom and kitchen as examples of the room’s dirty environment. But he felt the University responded well to the incident.
“The situation was handled in a very timely and efficient manner,” Shen said. “The Hopkins police officers sealed off everything, and I’m pretty sure no one got hurt. So in that regard, I felt the University did a very good job. It was very fast and efficient. The only real problems I had were with where we got housed.”
Both Shen and Tatum stated that the flooding and relocation have negatively impacted their studies.
“The AMRs don’t have fans or air-conditioning, so I was unable to sleep at night,” Tatum said. “I also had to run back and forth to Housing so many times because they weren’t communicating with us — that was all that I did in between and after classes. I am already very far behind on my work, and it’s only the first week.”
Shen echoed Tatum’s comments, stating that going back and forth between Commons and Homewood has been inconvenient and time-consuming.
“Now that I can’t work in my room anymore and now that I essentially live in two places, it’s been a huge impact on my academics. Most of my stuff is still in Commons, so I have to go in and out a lot,” Shen said.
Other students residing in the Charles Street Building were also affected by Sunday’s events. Sophomore Stephanie Klaskin said that her seventh-floor suite had minimal water damage but was upset that she was kept out of her room for eight hours.
“It was a pretty big inconvenience because that was the day I was going to do my homework and get everything done. I spent the whole day locked out of my room. I think the worst part about it was that no one was communicating with us. No one told us what was going on. No one still has told us what happened,” Klaskin said.
Although his suite was not damaged, sophomore Alex Ferzola, who lives on the sixth floor of the Charles Street Building, stated he was frustrated with the University’s response to the flooding.
“I wasn’t very happy with how they handled it because of how long it took [to resolve] and the lack of communication,” Ferzola said. “They didn’t really update us and kept us on a limb.”
According to Director of Housing and Operations Tracey Angel, all 12 students living in temporary housing will be able to move back into Charles Commons by next Tuesday.
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