Flood in Old Chemistry building, maintenance questioned

By Benny Sisson and Chastity Laskey | Published 10 hours ago | Updated 9 hours ago

A flood in the Old Chemistry building Wednesday morning, which was responsible for a complete network shutdown, raised concerns about the UAs maintenance of buildings.

The Old Chemistry buildings network connection went down Wednesday morning due to a flood in the south side of the buildings basement, which contained wiring systems to control the connection. Although causes of the flooding have not been officially pinpointed or confirmed, the building staff was not surprised by the incident.Michael Morris, IT manager for the department of chemistry and biochemistry, said someone might have turned the valve because the steam pipes had not been touched in years.

Someone enabled something that filled up the room with steam, which damaged all of our networking equipment that is also housed in this room, Morris said. Faculty noticed the network was down and called laboratory manager Scott Dreisbach, who noted that theres also networking equipment in the basement.University Information Technology Services responded quickly and were there in minutes, according to building staff. They had the system back online by Wednesday afternoon.

In this case, it is a major shut down of communication in a large building because computer switches had to be located in a basement 5 feet away from steam pipes, one of which shot out steam due to a trap failure, said Roger Miesfeld, head of the department of chemistry and biochemistry, in an email statement.

Malik Hawkins, building administrator, said the buildings physical condition could have contributed to Wednesday mornings flooding. Chemistry faculty and building management said that whenever something goes wrong in the 1930s-style building, they do whatever they can to make it work, according to Dreisbach and Ken Nebesny, supervising IT support.

What started off as a basement flooding turned quickly into a long list of neglected issues that had been stacked on top of each other for years. Dresibach said the buildings infrastructure is built on top of itself.

[This is] one more example about how deferring maintenance on an old research building [is] only going to cost more in the long run, Miesfeld said. Whats next? Asbestos, mold, broken natural gas line, etc. Old Chemistry has $50 million in deferred maintenance and no one seems to want to do anything about it.

Walking through the Old Chemistry building, one can see the broken ceiling tiles and abandoned electrical boxes open for anyone to access. The 6-inch floor tiles made of asbestos, the dead pigeons in the attic, the air ducts covered with duct tape and the vents spewing black particle chunks arent as easily noticed.

Nebesny and Dresibach pointed out specific areas of concern, such as 4,000-volt cable wirings dangling from the ceilings of general labs and office spaces.

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Flood in Old Chemistry building, maintenance questioned