A hot water hose burst in the bathroom of a fourth floor suite in 1019 Commonwealth Avenue Tuesday night, causing a significant leak that affected the third and second floors.
Boston University Residence Life sent an email to affected fourth floor residents Wednesday evening, saying they must remove all belongings from the suite by 8 a.m. Friday.
Six students in the fourth floor residence and two on the third floor were relocated to residences in West and South Campus, where they are anticipated to stay until Feb. 25. Damages to the lower floors did not prompt relocation, but will require repairs.
“I feel like we’re not given the help that we need right now,” said sophomore Aidan Koo, a resident of the fourth floor suite. “I feel all over the place, because I haven’t been able to focus on my studies. All I’ve been doing is packing.”
Around 5 p.m., Koo and his roommate heard an “explosion sound” in their fourth floor suite. They crossed their common room to the bathroom and saw water flowing from underneath the sink.
“We opened the cabinet, and then water just burst out,” Koo said. “Super hot, steaming water, so we couldn’t touch anything.”
Steam filled the room, setting off the smoke detector, and Koo went to the 1019 lobby to find a resident assistant. BU Facilities and additional contractors arrived about 30 minutes later to respond and assess the damage.
Residents of the fourth floor suite say it was flooded with about two inches of water.
Sophomore Emma Santos lives in the middle room of the fourth floor suite. She said her room “ended up being the most damaged” because it was in the water’s path as it rushed out of the bathroom.
BU Spokesperson Colin Riley said contractors began remediation, which will include drying the residences and investigating wall damage. After clean-up and remediation, some ceiling tiles and all of the carpet will be replaced.
On the second floor, water seeped through sophomore Alex Pollack’s closet wall. Pollack said she arrived at the residence and saw facilities workers removed her belongings from the closet to assess the damage.
Pollack ordered a clothing rack to store her belongings during the repairs, which she said felt like a “waste of money.”
“If you’ve lived in any dorm on BU campus, you know how important the closet is in terms of space,” Pollack said.
Pollack’s roommate, sophomore Lily Hirsch, said she heard water “coming down from the ceiling.”
Pollack said while residents of the affected third floor suite put their shower curtain on the floor to catch leaking water from the ceiling, “there was really nothing [they] could do” on the second floor, because water soaked through the walls.
“It’s never really the time for your home to be flooded,” Pollack said. “We live in such a small space already that now there’s all this clutter everywhere. It was honestly disheartening.”
Fans and dehumidifiers were placed in the residences to dry the carpet and ceiling over the next 72 hours, according to an email Residence Life sent to the fourth floor residents Wednesday morning.
“We’re really concerned that there’s gonna be mice and cockroaches … because this stuff definitely lives in those walls,” Hirsch said.
Riley acknowledged BU’s experience in handling water damage incidents.
“Unfortunately, we’re very good at cleaning up water because of the thousands of pipes going through all of our 15 million square feet of building space,” Riley said.
Pollack and Hirsch were told Wednesday that while damage to their residence does not require relocation, contractors will come to rip out and repair the closet wall.
“We’re going to be living in basically an active construction site,” Pollack said. “We’re going to have people in our room from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., which is really just so annoying.”
Koo and his roommate were relocated to 516 Park Drive in South Campus, while Santos, sophomore Emily Carmichael and their respective roommates were relocated to Rich Hall.
“We have to be relocated because they need to fix the pipe and they need to rip up the carpet,” Carmichael said. “The most annoying part of it [was] we were waiting around for at least three hours to find out where we were going to sleep that night.”
In the Tuesday night email, the residents were instructed to pack one week’s worth of clothing and necessary items. Koo and his roommate received a Lyft voucher from ResLife to help them move to South Campus.
“I was just putting all my stuff in garbage bags and moving it over in carts to Rich Hall because they said a week,” Carmichael said. “But who knows? It could be more. We don’t really know.”
Santos said the pipe burst was not the first issue she experienced in her dorm, noting incidents involving broken air conditioning and heating, and a window leak.
“The building definitely doesn’t have the best track record, but [BU] did what they could in response to the situation,” Santos said.
Pollack said she appreciates BU for doing what it can to help residents, despite how “frustrating” the situation is.
“I am really happy that they were very active in their response, but these things shouldn’t be happening for how much we’re paying for housing,” Pollack said.
Koo said he feels “all jumbled” after learning he has to completely move out of 1019 by Friday morning, and wishes BU gave him another Lyft voucher to transport his belongings to South Campus.
He said the residents of the fourth floor suite are “very anxious” with upcoming classwork and exams.
“We should get more accommodations in our studies,” Koo said. “This isn’t our fault that the pipe busted open, right? So I feel like they should provide us [with] more help. I feel like we’re not given that help that much.”
