A water main burst yesterday, flooding the basements of the Aidekman Arts Center, the Jackson Gymnasium, and the new Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center on the eve of a gala that will attract thousands to celebrate the new building's grand opening.
The Aidekman Arts Center's primary water main broke in the early morning, inundating the building's electrical room with nearly five feet of water, according to Director of University Facilities Robert W. Bertram. Classrooms and practice rooms were flooded as well, although not as deeply.
"It's stressful because this is on the eve of the great celebration for the opening of the new music center," Associate Professor of Music David Locke said.
Music Department Chair Joseph Auner agreed. "We've been working on the celebration since July," he said.
The damage is far from irreparable, though. The facilities department "caught it at a good time, [and] we were very lucky with the way the water flowed," Auner said.
A police officer discovered the water main break at around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning while patrolling the music center. The officer immediately alerted facilities, which soon sent staff members and outside contractors to drain the basement.
"Some facilities person came in and turned [off] the main building shut-off valve," Bertram said.
Working together with outside contractors, the facilities staff pumped water from the basement all morning. All the water was drained by about 1 p.m., according to Music Department Publicist and Events Manager Ryan Saunders.
Still, damage to the basements of Aidekman and the Granoff Center affected practice rooms, classrooms, instrument storage rooms and a world music room, causing workers to move many items to the dry Fisher Rehearsal Hall in the Granoff Center.
Basement classroom 012, which is below Jackson, suffered the most flooding out of the classrooms. "It basically filled up with about four feet of water," Locke said. "It looked like a swimming pool."
The music department will postpone dealing with much of the damage until this weekend's celebration is finished. "We'll push through [the gala] this weekend and make use of what we have," Saunders said. "Monday morning we're going to have to start looking at things."
The opening festival kicks off tonight with a pair of student a capella shows. The festival will run through Sunday afternoon.
"All the events will proceed as planned," Auner said. "We may have to use some alternate spaces."
The water main break occurred in the mechanical room under Aidekman, where the pipe coming from outside the building connects with the pipe that runs through Aidekman's basement. The latter pipe supplies the building with all of its water, except for that which is used for emergency fire sprinklers. The two pipes are conjoined by a water meter.
The connection between the outside pipe and the water meter broke, spewing water into the room at "something around the vicinity of 100 pounds of pressure," Bertram said.
"We'll file an insurance claim, because there's a lot [of] damage," he said.
The basement of the new music center is comprised of an east wing and a west wing. The west wing, located under the Aidekman Arts Center and Jackson Gymnasium, consists of mostly classrooms, rehearsal and practice rooms, and instrument storage areas.
These rooms were renovated and reopened last year. This is the wing that suffered almost all of yesterday's water damage.
The east wing is situated beneath the new music center and includes a large practice space, the new Lilly Music Library, and a world music room, equipped with rare Asian and African instruments.
"The west wing got flooded [by] about six inches of water," Locke said. "The [east wing] is on a higher grade [physically] than the west wing," so it was mostly unharmed by the water.
Flooding of the west wing's practice rooms caused the greatest concern. "We have guitar amps, bass amps, drum kits, [and] pianos," Locke said. "The ... pianos got wet up to their pedals. But the piano technician came down and was praising the rapid response, and ... thinking it'll be a kind of regular maintenance."
"Some instruments were damaged - bass drums, amplifiers," Auner said. Still, he said, "it could have been much worse."
All the instruments in the practice rooms except for a few grand pianos were packed into the east wing's large rehearsal hall, which was completely dry.
"We do have to cancel private lessons and classes [in the basement] for the next couple days," Saunders said. "While the rooms look safe, we have to make sure of health and safety concerns."
Auner said that the practice rooms and ensemble rooms are not going to be accessible until early next week.
In Aidekman, the flooding may interfere with drama productions. "Most [Tufts' drama] productions generally rehearse in Aidekman, so this is going to interfere with a whole bunch of rehearsals," senior theater major Brendan Shea said. "This is going to be really bad for productions, not to mention classes that meet there."
The only room in the east wing to endure considerable flooding was the world music room, which houses Tufts' gamelan, an enormous collection of Indonesian instruments that takes up much of the room.
"The world music room flooded a little," Locke said. "Basically, the instruments in the world music room are fine, but the floor is made of bamboo and the water got under the floor. It's a complex engineering problem to figure out how to get the water out. The bamboo is cracking."
The east wing's new music library was unscathed.
