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Hundreds of students displaced after burst pipe closes UMass Boston dorm
The university will reopen the East Residence dining hall starting Wednesday morning, UMass Boston said.
Hundreds of University of Massachusetts Boston students have been displaced since Monday after a sprinkler pipe burst, causing flooding in the East Residence Hall, said the Boston school.
“My friend from down the hall on the second floor was unable to get her stuff, and she’s with me right now. We’re kind of both just displaced at the moment. I’m living out of a suitcase, and she’s living with nothing,” Simone Trainor, a sophomore at UMass Boston, told Boston.com.
According to the university, the sprinkler pipe burst on the 10th floor due to extreme cold temperatures.
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“Based on initial assessments, approximately 50 rooms in the blue hallway of floors 2-10 were impacted with varying degrees of water damage,” the university said in an email to students.
Students say they received little information; some lack a place to stay
Trainor said she was in a laboratory Monday afternoon when a classmate alerted her to an emergency at their dorm.
“I was in my lab doing dissections when a girl next to me, who also lived in East Residence Hall on the same floor as me, the second floor, told me — not by email, not by a statement from the school, but by word of mouth from another roommate — that I had 10 minutes to grab my things and that a pipe burst and we were being flooded,” Trainor said.
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On their way back to the dorm, she saw students walking with stuffed bags and suitcases.
“That’s when we knew, and we started running faster to the dorms,” Trainor said.
When Trainor arrived, she noticed a long line of students milling about her residence hall, all wanting to get up to their room.
According to Trainor, police asked anyone who lived on the second floor to follow them so they could escort students to their room.
“There was water all over the stairs, and as I was walking up, the cops had flashlights,” Trainor said.
Once she made it inside her room, she said, she saw the floor covered in water.
Trainor had 30 minutes to pack up before police banged on her door, telling her she had to leave.
“I’m just packing clothes into random bags that I’m finding in my room because it’s dark, and I can’t see anything. I don’t know where my clothes are. I’m just grabbing things,” Trainor said.
Once she left her dorm, no one else on her floor was allowed back in, Trainor said.
Trainor is now staying with a friend who lives close to UMass Boston.
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Carly Martin, who said she’s a concerned UMass Boston student, said students have received little information about a timeline for being allowed back into their rooms and what conditions the rooms are in.
“Some students were unable to be placed into the universities alternative housing, which has resulted in homelessness. There are cases where students have been packing into hotels, sleeping on the streets, and even forced to sleep on public transportation,” Martin wrote in an email directed at Mayor Michelle Wu on Tuesday evening.
In her email, Martin shared what she said were comments from impacted students.
“If you get caught sleeping in the common rooms in West, they’ll kick you out. It’s just so funny to me that we were made homeless overnight, are getting no information, and then can’t even sleep in one of the few options we have at the moment,” one student said.
“I was in a conference room and I got woken up at 1 a.m. and told I have to leave by 7 a.m., or there’s gonna be issues,” wrote another.
UMass Boston did not answer questions Tuesday night about students being left without a place to sleep.
How UMass Boston plans to help displaced students
The Boston Fire Department and the State Building Inspector extended the “no occupancy” status for the dorm due to unsafe electrical systems, according to the support website.
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“The building will remain closed for the next several days. The building will remain closed to allow facilities and remediation teams to repair damage, restore fire suppression systems, remove excess water, and fully assess the extent of the impact within the hall,” UMass Boston said.
Once officials have deemed the building safe for students to enter, students will have supervised access to retrieve essential items and there will be limited entry to specific floors or wings, the university said in an email sent to students.
The school has provided essential items like towels, bed linens or blankets, pillows, and cell phone chargers to impacted students, the university wrote on its website.
East Residence Hall hosts the only traditional dining hall, which was closed immediately after the flooding. The dining hall has been determined to be safe and will reopen Wednesday morning, the university said in an email to students.
On Monday evening, the university sent out an email to impacted students notifying them of temporary housing at the UMass Amherst, Charles River Campus in Newton.
Students who moved to the neighboring campus have access to shuttles that return to UMass Boston every hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., the school wrote.
The school is actively looking for dorm locations closer to the main campus, university officials said.
“We know that waiting for updates, especially when answers are uncertain, is stressful. We are committed to sharing information as soon as it is confirmed and to communicate clearly, even when timelines are still evolving,” the university said in an email to students.
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