At the earliest hour of Sunday morning at Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, a sprinkler head was broken off of the second floor ceiling, causing severe flooding on that floor and the floor below it.
According to junior Kole Brinegar, the fraternity’s president, a nonmember kicked a soccer ball at one of the sprinklers, and water immediately started pouring out of the pipe into the hallway and leaked into the first floor ceiling, enough to knock light fixtures down. The fire alarm went off as well.
“Pretty much all of the rooms in the new section of the house have at least some degree of water damage,” Brinegar said.
Not only were members’ rooms damaged, but also their valuables.
“Clothes, laptops, couches, TV’s… literally anything you can think of that would be in somebody’s room is damaged for the most part,” Brinegar said.
The fire department was dispatched at 12:02 a.m. They arrived at 12:03 a.m. and cleared the scene at 12:45 a.m., according to the Chief of the Greencastle Fire Department, John Burgess.
“If I had to take a guess, they probably had 500 to 1000 gallons of water,” Burgess said.
All in all, the situation was rather frantic and random.
“The floor was already starting to take on a good amount of water,” said junior Meghan Burke, who was at the house and heard the commotion. “The fire alarm started going off, and everyone evacuated the building with backpacks filled with their valuables. It was extremely hectic and no one really knew what to do.”
Brinegar said the university lackes organization during the fiasco, but he understood that it was a difficult situation to solve quickly.
“Granted, it was like one in the morning when all of this was going on, so I understand that the university couldn’t get organized that fast. But they were very helpful today," he said. "Obviously, guys don’t like being taken out their house. Given the circumstances, the university did everything they could do.”
At least 60 of the 70 members who live in the Phi Kappa Psi house are living in Bloomington Street Hall until the damages are fixed and the house is suitable for living. The remainder of the students have other living arrangements on campus.
Vice President for Student Life Chris Wells recognized the asset of Bloomington Street Hall’s availability this year.
“We’ve been very fortunate this year that we had a small admission class a couple of years ago, so we have not been using Bloomington Street Hall,” Wells said. “One of the things that these experiences underlined for us is that we need to expand our thinking for how to plan for this kind of disaster recovery in cases where we don’t have Bloomington Street Hall. The Inn was sold out, so it was not an option to put them over there…so we lucked out. The immediate scramble was to think about the needs of the men in terms of food and shelter.”
Dean of Students Cara Setchell sent out an email to faculty informing them of the situation and requesting that they grant as much leniency with extensions to students as they feel comfortable with, due to the fact that many students' laptops and assignments were destroyed in the flooding.
The timeline for when the men can return to their house is currently unclear. According to Wells, there are three levels of tasks that need to be done before they can return. The first is to get moisture out of the house; then, the university needs to ensure that the electrical systems are safe; lastly, the fire suppression system must be fixed.
“I have heard everything from two weeks to tomorrow,” Brinegar said. Originally, the men were told to grab items such as their phone, wallet and a change of clothes. The following day, however, they were told to grab items that would last them a couple of weeks, just in case.
“It’s the last stretch of the semester, so you have seniors that aren’t going to be able to spend their last few weeks potentially in the house that they’ve lived in for three years,” Brinegar said on behalf of the fraternity’s reaction to the situation.
The exact monetary amount for damages is unclear as of the time of publication.