Wading through welcome week: Bruce Hall flood
Treasure Hardwick, News and Feature Editor
The first week of college is daunting. You have new roommates, new routines and the pressure of finding your place on campus. Just as the freshmen at North Greenville University began to settle in, their routines were upended. Two days before classes began, a knock woke students from sleep. When they stepped out of bed, it wasn’t onto a new rug or cool tile floor, but into an inch of water seeping across their rooms.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 18, a pipe burst on the third floor of Bruce Hall, a male dorm located in the middle of NGU’s campus. The flood caused water to trickle down the ceilings and walls, affecting 16 rooms. This flood forced dozens of freshmen to relocate to another dorm the day before classes began.
Eduardo Garcia-Duran, freshman health science major, had just started to settle in after the chaos of move-in and preseason football practices. On the morning of the flood, he awoke from his sleep to the sound of banging on his door.
“I thought I overslept for practice when I heard the banging on my door,” Garcia-Duran said. “When I stepped out of bed, I was shocked to feel water on the floor.”
The SLT at the door informed him of the flood and explained the urgency of grabbing his valuable belongings and leaving the building.
“I lost my rug and mini fridge, but the move to Howard hasn’t been too bad,” Garcia-Duran said. “The rooms are actually pretty spacious, even if we have to adjust to the shared bathrooms.”
While students like Garcia-Duran were dealing with the stress of relocation, NGU administrators were working behind the scenes to address the cause of the flood and help the students in any way possible.
Jarred Thomas, vice president for campus ministries and student engagement, explained that a pipe burst is not a shocking occurrence in large dorms such as Bruce. So, when he got word of the flood around 5 a.m. from campus security, he made several calls to ensure that the damage got repaired as soon as possible, and that the affected students were taken care of.
Thomas organized groups to come and move the students from Bruce to Howard Hall. He ensured that every roommate pair stayed together, and that no major changes took place besides the actual move and flooding.
While students moved housing, NGU fixed the busted pipe, which did not take long.
The major issues did not lie within the broken pipe, but the aftermath of the flood. Most of the damage was to the baseboards, bed boxes and furniture.
NGU hired a company who brought dehumidifiers and air testing for mold prevention, as well as a company who is currently ripping out and replacing floors and beds with better furniture, floors and mid-loft beds.
Thomas estimated that the renovations will be completed in around a month after the flood took place.
