Torrential rain floods classrooms across campus
Two classrooms in Wightman Hall flooded after torrential rainfall hit Central Michigan University on Thursday, Sept. 3.
A thin layer of water was found leaking out of the ground through a shared wall between the Printmaking Lab and the Critique Lab. Students were coming back into the classroom after a presentation when they noticed the water, Zoey Lawrence, a student in the class and lead designer for Central Michigan Life said.
“We get in there and immediately, everyone’s like, ‘oh my god, the room is flooding,’” Lawrence said. “I couldn’t say anyone had a calm reaction.”
Chair of Art and Design Scott De Brestian said several faculty members and a handful of students quickly helped clean the classrooms with mops, wet vacuums and sandbags.
“Once we realized it was starting to come in, we kind of jumped into action,” De Brestian said. “(We) had a lot of students helping out and started getting the water out.
“It was a bit of chaos and scrambling for a little while at the start of that, but we were eventually able to get that under control.”
De Brestian said the source of how the water got in is still unknown, but no other parts of the building were affected.
“We haven’t had any chance to do a diagnosis,” he said.
Mount Pleasant and CMU saw heavy downpours on Thursday, with water covering roads and branches ripped off of trees. According to MLive, over 347,000 businesses and homes were without power across the Southeast and Mid-Michigan region after heavy rainfall and severe weather.
Ari Harris, executive director of strategic communications at CMU, wrote in an emailed statement to CM Life that Facilities Operations and the CMU Office of Residence Life started to respond to several flooding reports across buildings and residential halls on Thursday.
“CMU employees and external vendors quickly responded to reports of flooding, assessed the concerns and began clean-up in those areas," Harris wrote. "Many of those employees worked throughout the day and into the evening."
Moore 110 was also flooded. Harris wrote that all reported issues across campus have been addressed.
