Written by John Hund
A bathroom pipe burst on the second floor of Sverdrup Hall Wednesday morning in the south end of the building. Standing water covered the blue carpet upstairs, as water flowed to the lower level. Restoration workers said the pipe carried only water. No sewage or gas was leaked in the incident.
Pipe damage appeared to be a bent bracket which failed to hold the pipe together resulting in the leak. At 8:30 this morning help was called to manage the situation.
Woodard Cleaning & Restoration cleaned the carpet and walls. The team had removed the baseboards connected to the damaged flooring and walls to prevent future mold growth.
As of 12:30 p.m., the pipe had been repaired, and the drying team moved in. At 1:30 p.m., the drying team was still bringing in fans to air out the carpet.
Gina Jensen, coach for Webster University Forensics and Debate Team, has an office across the hall from the second floor bathroom. She mentioned that the School of Communications staff recused most things, however there are a couple of computers that she is worried about.
“I suspect since classes were cancelled, no one noticed for a while,” Jensen said.
Jensen was not present at the time of the incident. The debate team was going to meet there to depart for their first tournament today.
The rest of the communications building went about its day as usual. Chris Bowman manages the photo dark room and said he was not too concerned about the damage.
“The floods are coming!” Bowman said.
The darkroom was not damaged by the pipe burst.
As the annual Webster Works Worldwide was scheduled for today, there were no classes going on inside the building when the accident occurred.
The Journal will update this story as information becomes available.
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