Drew Hall: rain moves in

During the storm on Thursday night, Drew 3rd floor experienced leaking ceilings, flooding basements and further damage due to the age of the roof.

Signs+are+put+out+to+warn+students+of+the+leak.

Shylie Burleson-King

Signs are put out to warn students of the leak.

Shylie Burleson-King, Senior Reporter

After the turbulent weather that washed over Minnesota, campus had become soaked, but puddles and soaked shoes were not the only evidence of the power of the rains. Drew Hall’s east and main wings on the third floor began to leak at about 9 p.m. on Thursday night, according to sophomore and RA in Drew, Drew Mares.

“I woke up to texts that the building was leaking from my residents at 9:41 p.m,” Mares said. “There was like a four inch lake on the roof… I was bucketing water off of the roof. [On Drew 3rd floor] we’ll need to replace 15 to 20 ceiling tiles… the paint was running. The entire carpet of the main and east wing was waterlogged… We had to put down cardboard walkways for the residents.”

While the damage was not extremely severe, it went beyond the area near the elevator, where the initial leaking happened.

“It started leaking, and we had no buckets,” Deery said. “Everyone was bringing out their recycle bins… the paint started to bubble off of the wall, and the water was draining under my doorway. When I walked I could hear the carpet sloshing under my feet.”

Mares went on to describe more of the damage.

“The IT closet was completely flooded, all the cables were in a puddle,” Mares said. “The basement also flooded, from the laundry room hallway to the media arts area… The bubbler (water fountain) was out of commission all night because they had to reroute the pump to remove water from the roof.”

‘They’ were the Hamline Public Safety officers who responded, prior to Mares’ arrival on the scene.

“My residents said Public Safety came right away. Later that night, they were the ones who set up the pumps and came back every few hours to check on it,” Mares said. “I met the responding officer at midnight when we went to check out the roof.”

Many residents, like sophomore Soren Kremer were wondering what was happening when a flood of Snapchat stories showed images of an indoor rain storm.

“I got a Snapchat from [first-year] Will Deery of rain dripping into the building… I went upstairs with him to check it out, and on the way there I heard rain falling inside the elevator shaft,” Kremer said. “It was shocking to hear it raining inside. Then, on the third floor, I saw water running under the paint causing it to bubble off… There were recycle bins full of water all around Will’s room and water was just falling in from the middle of the ceiling.”

When attempting to dent the problem on the roof of Drew, Mares learned some of the cause of the leak.

“[According to the officer] there’s supposed to be a drain hole on the side of the roof and one in the center where there is a pipe.” Mares demonstrated with his hands the shape of a triangle as he explained. “The water is supposed to kind of flow down into these places because of the shape of the roof… The roof is meant to be slanted and over the years it’s gotten flat, so the center is now the deepest point.”

Residents of the third floor were perturbed by the damp ending to their damp days on Thursday.

Shylie Burleson-King
Bubbled paint that occurred when the rain leaked into the hallways.