Ripon College Days

Issue date: 1/27/10 Section: News

Media Credit: Photo submitted Terrible discovery. A break in a newly installed water line causes the basement of Storzer to fill with approximately 152,000 gallons of water. The flooding occurred Dec. 26.

While routine maintenance and upgrades were being performed to Storzer over winter break, Alliant Energy noticed the power had gone out for the entire building. When determining what happened, they found seven to eight feet of water in the basement of the building.

To fix the situation, the city of Ripon shut off the water and power supply to the building. In just over a day, the water was pumped out of the building and generators were set in place for the building.

Although the college initially thought that it would take six to eight weeks to get students into the building, the clean up took less time and the building currently has a temporary occupancy level because of the fire system that was affected.

"At first we were told that we could not have anyone in the building until we had the new fire system in place," says Cody Pinkston, director of media and public relations. "Then we found out that while we are in the process of replacing the system that we can have a guard on duty to monitor the building for any situations, that way we can get a temporary occupancy to have people in the building."

The work that needs to be done will not affect the classes and practices in place right now, even though more work needs to be done. This is because the city is giving a temporary occupancy permit.

"At least the electrical components, the water heaters, the water softeners, the pool pump, emergency generators, and the main electrical switch gear need to be replaced entirely or the electrical panels for them need to be replaced," says Pinkston.

"We figure the total cost is going to be somewhere around $250,000 to $300,000," says Pinkston. "Obviously that will be covered by insurance."

Work still needs to be done on the fire system because the electric panel needs to be replaced. The only sport still affected by the accident is swimming. The team is currently practicing at Ripon High School, and was one of the first concerns about moving around athletic events and practices.

Even though it was an inconvenience for the school to have to worry about rescheduling athletics, between Marian University, Lawrence University, St. Norbert College, and Beloit College, potential venues to move the games to were created.

"We engaged the high school early in this process to see what their practice schedules look like and their game schedules to borrow their facilities for a while," says Pinkston.

A lot of help and quick action was necessary for the accident to be cleaned up when it was. Approximately 152,000 gallons of water filled up the basement, but all was removed quickly and efficiently to not disturb students using the facilities. The cause of the break is still undetermined.

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