Two water-related incidents struck the College this week.

On Monday at 3:46 p.m., Associate Vice President of Safety and Security Bill Harwood emailed the campus community noting that the College and the Town of Brunswick were currently facing a water outage.

“We are aware we have lost water service to many buildings across campus,” Harwood wrote. “The water supply shortage is affecting others in town as well.”

In a follow-up email sent roughly an hour later, Harwood explained that the outage was due to an off-campus water leak and restoration was in progress.

“The source of the water outage was identified as a significant water leak at a location off campus near Barrows Street in Brunswick. The leak has been repaired by the town, and the water is now being restored to campus,” Harwood wrote.

The Brunswick and Topsham Water District explained how they first became aware of the outage.

“The treatment plant operator received an alarm from our [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] system shortly after 2:30 [p.m.], after which we began receiving calls and emails from customers,” the District wrote in an email to the Orient.

The District emphasized the unique nature of this outage, during which many customers were at home due to the snow storm.

“The situation of the leak occurring when nearly every customer was home and awake is unusual. Breaks often occur with far fewer customers noticing. This created complicated logistics for the office trying to listen to all the calls and reading all the emails to see if someone observed the location of the break,” the District wrote. “Fortunately, we had a full crew plus additional staff in the field focused on locating the leak and isolating it.”

Executive Director of Dining Ryan Miller outlined how Dining Services first became aware of the outage in an email to the Orient.

“At around 3 p.m. we began to notice that water pressure was decreasing. It only took a few minutes for water to stop altogether,” Miller wrote.

Miller continued by emphasizing the practical nature of Dining Services’ response.

“We were faced with the reality of needing to prepare for dinner regardless of the situation. Without water to the dining venues, much of our kitchen and dishwashing equipment [could] not operate,” Miller wrote. “We transitioned to bottled and canned beverage service, compostable plateware and made some menu adjustments to account for the reduction in available kitchen equipment. It made for a hectic afternoon for the team, but everyone responded well and did their part to make sure that dinner could still go out under less-than-ideal circumstances.”

Miller explained that planning in the case of inclement weather was critical to the efficiency of their response.

“Campus operations plans extensively for how to respond to similar situations to what occurred on Monday. Living on the coast of Maine means lots of unpredictable weather and emergencies that come from it. Our most frequent contingency plan relates to power outages since they happen so often,” Miller wrote. “While I will admit that losing water service to all dining locations was never something on our radar, much of our other contingency planning work led directly to us working through a solution.”

In addition to the water outage, a water pipe burst in Sills Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Associate Vice President for Facilities and Capital Projects Jeff Tuttle wrote in an email to the Orient that there was no connection between the pipe’s bursting and Monday’s water outage. He outlined how Facilities became aware of the leak and how they responded.

“The Department Coordinator for Sills Hall submitted a work order notifying Facilities of a water intrusion on the bottom floor of the building. Members of our Mechanical Services team were on the scene within a few minutes while others simultaneously shut off the water remotely through our building management software,” Tuttle wrote. “The affected areas are now being thoroughly dried out, and some areas will require deconstruction to ensure all of the water is removed before repairs can commence.”

Associate Professor of German Jill Smith was in her office at the time the pipe burst.

“My office is one of two that flooded. Facilities came to our aid as quickly as they could and helped us to relocate to another office in Sills, so I feel well supported by them,” Smith wrote in an email to the Orient. “I am also grateful to the two students who jumped to my aid as soon as they noticed what was happening.”