Extreme temperatures last week caused a number of the UW campus’s water systems to fail and flood various facilities on campus early Friday morning. Jon Shuckman at the UW Physical Plant said Coe Library, White Hall and a janitor’s closet on the lower side of War Memorial Stadium were affected.
The stacks in Coe’s old section were closed throughout the weekend and Monday as crews from the custodial staff and Physical Plant worked with library staff and representatives from Belfor, a property restoration company, to protect the collection and infrastructure.
Laura Peterson, Director of Risk Management and Insurance at UW, said the total cost of damage could not yet be assessed, but said she thinks the damages will add up to less than $50,000. Peterson said she expects the library to be “mostly open” by today.
Deborah McCarthy, Head of Technical Services at UW libraries, said water was “cascading” down the staircase and dripping down the electrical cases in the center of the stacks, causing damage to walls, ceilings and plywood. Flooding that began on the sixth level continued all the way to the first level. McCarthy said flooding on the fourth, third and second levels were not as bad as the others.
Nathan Roberts, a Project Manager at Belfor, described the damage in the library as “minimal,” but said every scenario is different and the situation at Coe is developing.
“I wish it was rocket science, but it’s not,” Roberts said. “Different materials respond to water differently.”
The flooding began when a pipe burst just below the roofline around 1 a.m. on Friday, said Maggie Farrell, UW’s libraries dean. Farrell said pipes on the portion of Coe built in the 1970’s had frozen during the coldest days last week and ruptured when temperatures warmed up Thursday.
“We did have standing water in portions of the building,” Farrell said.
Jon Schuckman, the Mechanical Trades Senior Manager of the Physical Plant, said he was called around 2 a.m. on Friday, and that by 4 a.m., the responding teams from the Laramie Fire Department and on-call technicians had the scene ready for clean up and repair. The swift response, he said, prevented further damage to the library.
“It’s a credit to the efficiency of our guys,” Schuckman said.
Not long after receiving the call about Coe, Schuckman said he received a call saying that pipes had burst in White Hall. A domestic water line above an overhang had split and leaked water into bathrooms from the eighth to the first floor of the residence hall. Those bathrooms were closed to residents that morning and opened later in the afternoon. Schuckman said draft or insulation issues could have been factors in some parts of the building.
“It was an unusual situation,” he said. “The extreme cold brings out the worst or best in buildings.”
Including damage to the infrastructure, there was some damage to the library’s collection. Water, Farrell said, can have dangerous implications for a collection, as even materials not exposed to direct contact with water can develop mold.
“Since the books are packed so tightly together, when mold sets in, it will spread from book to book,” Farrell said. “Water is one of the most dangerous impacts to a collection. Once you get mold, you can’t do anything, basically.”
Farrell said the library was fortunate to not have sustained heavier damage. The damaged items, including gift books and books from the T section (mostly science, Farrell said) had been taken to the American Heritage Center for restoration. The American Heritage Center, located on the sixth level of the library, does restoration work.
Farrell, like Schuckman, also credited the limited damage to the timeliness and capability of responding entities.
“We had custodians and individuals from the Physical Plant here so fast that if they had not responded so quickly, the damage to the collection would have been much more significant,” Farrell said.
Peterson, who has been with the university since October 2010, said there was no indication that a design or maintenance flaw in the water system could be attributed to the pipes bursting.
“We haven’t identified if there was a failure,” Peterson said.
The Physical Plant, Peterson said, would work towards solutions for faulty water systems. Last week’s pipe bursts reminded students, faculty and staff of damage to the Health Science building on campus last December.
“There is an effort to look forward to what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future,” Peterson said.
One idea was whether sensors could be placed onto systems susceptible to damage from cold weather that would warn officials if conditions were dangerously cold. Even so, Peterson said, there is only so much that can be done.
“In the Health Science building, thee was never a determination if it was a design or maintenance flaw,” she said. “Even if you design it and maintain it properly, it can still fail.”
If water systems do continue to fail, the university could end up paying. Peterson said UW has a $250,000 deductible on insurance claims, and in situations where the deductible is not met – such as the current situation in Coe – the money comes from Risk Management’s reserve fund. The possibility of more losses in damages in this fiscal year could pose a financial risk.
“If you continue to have losses over a certain amount of time, you deplete your reserves and your premiums rise,” Peterson said.
Farrell said the budget for repairing, maintaining or upgrading the library’s water system came from the Major Maintenance portion of the budget. Mark Collins, Associate Vice President of Operations at UW, said Major Maintenance extends to repairing, maintaining or upgrading any facility or infrastructure on campus.
“It’s a lot of ground to cover,” Collins said. “If we recognize anything that needs to be done in repair, maintenance or upgrade, we would certainly look into this.”
Gov. Matt Mead’s budget proposal does mention Coe Library, saying the university’s facilities are “a jewel in our [state’s] crown and we must continue to add to its luster.” While the budget focuses on building new facilities, Farrell hopes existing facilities are not forgotten in the excitement to expand.
“We have such a large infrastructure and for many years, we did not receive legislative funding for Major Maintenance or received not enough to really maintain the investment that the state has made into the University of Wyoming,” she said. “So new buildings are great and wonderful, but I think we need to always ensure we are taking care of the entirety of the infrastructure that the university is responsible for.”
There have had some water leaks in the new wing and the remodeled area of the library, but Farrell said they have been minimal. Part of that, she said, was that, “We live in Wyoming and it gets cold.”
