The immediate excitement surrounding a High Rise dorm flood, fire and two evacuations may have calmed down after last week, but the repair work for Lipscomb facilities staff is still underway.
Generators are supplying power to High Rise while the facilities team continues to inspect and repair electrical issues related to the building, said Kim Chaudoin, director of university communication and marketing.
“I think they’re still exploring and trying to get to the root of the problem,” she said, “trying to make sure when they repair it that they’ve caught everything that there is to repair at this point.”
Chaudoin said the facilities crew plans to do more work over spring break in order to avoid disturbing students.
Michael Engelman, associate director of the physical plant, confirmed that power to a few buildings on campus will be turned off briefly during the break to allow facilities to replace cabling that was damaged last week. He said the power outage will last just long enough to replace the cable and safely get the workers out of the manhole.
Engelman said the main issue with repairs is the time required to get new parts, especially for older buildings.
“It just takes so long to get these parts in, that’s what people don’t understand,” he said. “It just takes time to get parts because nobody in Nashville stocks some of this stuff.”
Engelman said he’s not sure yet of the total cost of the dorm’s repairs.
Reports have circulated saying that a fire occurred in High Rise last week, but Engelman said that’s not really accurate. The fire occurred in the manhole in front of the steam plant, he clarified.
The situation was handled well, Engelman said, adding that his team tries to emphasize prevention.
“When an event like that happens everybody is in a panic. That includes the fire chief,” he said. “We learn every time something like this happens. We try to catch it before something comes up.”
Chaudoin said she thinks situations like this are natural when dealing with old buildings.
“I think anytime you have buildings that are in varying ages, things–just like people–wear out and need maintenance,” she said. “Obviously, we don’t like for that to happen in a way that inconveniences our students. As the buildings get a little bit older, and we have so many people using them, they just naturally wear down a little bit.”
Engelman said 95 percent of the damage to High Rise resulted from water getting into the electrical system.
According to Engelman, every dorm has a building engineer who works eight hours a day, “going room to room” if necessary, to repair anything that may break.
Chaudoin said the episode with High Rise served as a learning experience and a good test of the university’s emergency procedures.
“I think we learned that the safety of our students is most important. We’ll always err on the side of caution,” she said, adding that they would rather wake up students in the middle of the night than put lives in danger.
Chaudoin said the university has a crisis plan with guidelines for a variety of events or emergencies that may occur.
“With routine maintenance, there are things you can be keeping an eye on, but these things, they just happen,” Chaudoin said, “and when they do we try to respond in a calm, systematic manner.”
“I really appreciate the way that the residents were cooperative,” she said of the students in High Rise. “I know it was an inconvenience, but the guys were great. We just always want to make sure they’re fine, as fine as we can keep them.”