25 CommentsA resident on the second floor of Broadway left a window open—yes, for all of break—which reportedly caused a pipe to burst, which caused a big spill. Public Safety confirmed that they are in there, trying to clean things up. The pipe burst an hour ago, btw.
We hope your room won’t be flooded if you live on the second floor of Broadway! Send us pictures or more information if you’re on campus to: tips@bwog.com.
Update (5:30 pm): Daniel Sims ventured into the building and came up with these pictures, which show a significant amount of water in a Broadway seminar room and a peeling wall from the damage.
Also, it appears that the second floor is not used for housing, so Columbia only has to worry about the three piano practice rooms close by and potentially relocating sections of Lit Hum from the floor—but who left the window open then?
Update (Jan 6 at 2:30 pm): Bwog received this statement from Dan Held, Executive Director of Communications for Columbia Facilities. Emphasis is ours.
A pipe burst in the Broadway Seminar room on the second floor on Friday night causing the Fire Alarm to go off. Flooding occurred in that room and some water went into the office below. Some electrical panels also got wet. No student rooms were affected. The elevators were out for about an hour until the Fire Alarm was reset. All was cleaned up quickly. There are still some limited electrical outages until the electrical panel dries completely. Our mechanics are checking out the electrical panels and working on getting all electricity back.
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25 Comments
@Jack These pictures remind me of that brief series of scenes in Titanic where you think for a moment maybe I’ll live
@Sad Musician I hope the pianos are okay…
@Anonymous There were burst pipes in Lenfest Hall over the weekend. Some dumbass left her window open during the storm, and rooms on at least eight floors got flooded. My fancy schmancy carpet got ruined, and now I’m pissed as hell.
@Anonymous shit all this talk about burst pipes makes me scared that i accidentally left my window open in my rush to get to the airport on time. only one more week until i get back, i hope the pipes on the upper floors of broadway hold strong
@Sad Alum That was my lit hum room, d’aw
@Anonymous Thanks a lot whomever student. I hope they fix everything up in time for the start of the semester.
@No Fuck that’s my CC room.
@Columbia housing would... probably blame it on the Broadway residents’ collective fault and divide the fixing cost among the residents and add it to the already 30K ebill without notification (or worse, a passive aggresive email)
@Anonymous Damn, I left one of those windows open before the break. It was way too hot in that room anyway…sorry.
@Anonymous God, I hate that room. I had CC there.
@Anonymous @Anonymous: i had lit hum, CC, and my first kiss there
@Anonymous Awwwww :D
@Anonymous So your first kiss was in college….
@BwogRomance Go!
@Illuminatifire if the room temp drops low enough then pipes can freeze and eventual burst
@Anon I’m sorry..I’m no plumber..but how does leaving a window open cause a pipe to burst? My money’s on the pipe just being bad..housing pointing fingers.
@Anonymous Are we really gonna claim that freezing pipes don’t frequently burst just so we can vilify housing?
@Anonymous I dunno, given housing’s dismal showing this year (collapsing ceilings and all) I’m not ready to write off faulty pipes. Although an open window in the bastard cold hitting NYC now would have definitely helped the problem along. I’m guessing what happened* is someone left a second-floor window open and, since nobody’s living on that floor anyways, the heat for that floor was shut off to save money or something, causing the pipe to burst and the floor to turn into Surf City.
*disclaimer: I was born and raised in a place that never had a winter below 60, so my knowledge of cold and pipes is really basic. Someone please correct my armchair theorizing if it’s wrong.
@English major here And it’s obvious why leaving a window open would cause a pip to burst.
cold outside -> steam pipe hot -> cold comes inside thru window -> laws of gases work on the pipes, which are set for room temperature and not 20 degrees or whatever -> pipe bursts
@anon Just asked a plumber how leaving a window open would cause a pipe to burst and the answer is that the only way for that to happen is if the heat has been off for a while or it was a faulty pipe. I am going to go with columbia has had the heat off and this was bound to happen due to the cold conditions
@Anon 2 i’m pretty sure water expands as it freezes.
@Anon This is one of those comments that just epitomizes some of the more clueless students at this school.
After I read what you wrote, I pictured you wearing a mink coat sitting in your family room under a crystal chandelier muttering about how incompetent housing is.
@Anon Sorry I’m actually just kinda dumb.
@Anonymous Please tell me that fucking moron will lose housing…
@abc It was on the second floor. The articles says that no one lives there, it just houses piano practice rooms and a LitHum classroom. Nobody’s losing housing.