Students have to find temporary housing due to flooding

Four residents of Cokesbury Court Apartments had to temporarily relocate after their room flooded.

Maddie Reese, acting sophomore, said she went to her apartment after class on March 20, and found it filled with water.

“Well of course I slipped and fell into the water,” Reese said. “The water was up to my ankles.”

The apartment flooded after a broken pipe caused one of their toilets to start spraying water, Reese said.

“It’s nothing we did wrong, the toilet just broke,” she said.

Reese said she tried calling the Resident Assistant phone number, but no one answered.

“I came into the office and they gave me a broom. We had to start sweeping the water out, and when that didn’t work, we used a vacuum.”

Reese called her roommates, Meghan Rooney and Chloe Byars, music theater sophomores and Kirbie Crosbie, acting sophomore, and told them to come home.

Reese said they were advised not to come back to their dorm until the next Monday.

‘There are fans set up in all of our rooms to try and dry off the carpets and the walls,” she said. “We could get black mold if they don’t dry.”

The two rooms adjacent to the broken toilet are partially soaked, while the rooms across the dorm are completely wet, Reese said.

“Our apartment is built on a slant so the water started on the opposite side of the apartment and ran into mine and Meghan’s room,” she said.

The girls had to move their furniture on top of their beds to clear off the wet carpet, Byars said.

“All of my notes for class were soaked,” Byars said. “I usually keep my piano book under my piano on the floor too.”

Reese said this isn’t the first time this has happened in their apartment.

“This has happened before,” she said. “The man who repaired our toilet told us the same thing happened in our apartment two years ago.”

Byars said housing offered to relocate the residents.

“They offered to house us somewhere else in Cokesbury, but it would be with people who had extra space,” Byars said. “I would feel weird staying with a stranger.”

Reese said she and Byars are staying with friends on campus, but Rooney and Crosbie chose to stay in a hotel. The university is not covering their relocation fees.