The fourth floor of Capella Hall, formerly Residence Hall North, experienced significant flooding in a hallway and multiple dorm rooms Aug. 19 after a major valve broke during a water shutoff for a shower repair. A TikTok video posted by marketing freshman Livy Ker of her dorm and hallway flooding has accumulated over 2.3 million views as of Aug. 31.
Ker, along with her roommates marketing freshman Abril Nadal and business administration freshman Wendy Rubio were in their dorm for most of the flooding. Nadal said the flooding began around 4:20 p.m. and water was still in the room and hallways by 7:30 p.m. Ker said maintenance shut off the water supply to Capella’s fourth floor around 5 p.m. The floor was without water until around 11 p.m. Nadal, who was in the dorm when the flooding started, said she let in the maintenance worker who began the shower repair that led to the broken valve.
“He came in for a work order I had put in about our lights not turning on,” Nadal said. “He had gone into the shower room and he was like, ‘oh, so this is the light that isn’t working.’ … He said, ‘oh, I think I’ve worked in this shower before.’ And I said, ‘yeah, you were supposed to fix our hot cold situation, but it’s still really hot.’ So, he just went in and fixed it. He didn’t even look at the lights … and just started working [on the shower] … I went back to my room and then eventually I just hear streams of water.”
Rubio, who was in Vega Hall — formerly Residence Hall Northwest — when the water valve broke, said she arrived at Capella’s fourth floor to water filling the hallway just a few minutes later.
“I was walking forward [on Capella’s fourth floor] and I just see these crew people just running and [panicking],” Rubio said. “I guess I take a while to process things [so] I was like, okay, cool … As I’m getting closer to the left turn, I hear all the water … I had to actually run through it and got my shoes all wet … We all eventually got our shoes wet.”
Ker, Rubio and Nadal said the intense flooding made them frantic — especially Nadal, whose bedroom was closest to the encroaching water. Rubio said she used a Swiffer and broom to push water out of her room to protect her belongings, and Nadal piled her belongings onto her bed and put a towel under her door. In Ker’s TikTok, maintenance workers can be seen vacuuming the water in the hallway; Rubio said they later left and Nadal took over vacuuming the water. Nadal said that when water started pouring out of their shower room, the maintenance worker disappeared for 20 minutes and returned with a second individual, and later a third, who attempted to fix the problem.
“I’m going back and forth, like, ‘Hey, what’s going on? What’s happening?’” Nadal said. “All they keep saying is everything’s fine. ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine. We’ll get it fixed, everything’s fine.’ And I’m like, OK, that is so sketchy.”
While the flooding did not cause significant damage to personal property, Ker said she is worried about mold growing because the dorm’s doors and furniture have water damage on the bottom and the suite has a humid smell. Nadal said she and her roommates emailed Housing and have not received a response. A spokesperson from UTD Housing told The Mercury in an email that flooding issues in residence halls are typically one-off anomalies or caused by freezing temperatures. The spokesperson said no students have “reported any damage or lasting issues due to the water intrusion,” and that Housing will investigate any such reports and assist affected students if needed.
“During a water shutoff for a shower repair, a major valve broke in the fourth floor ceiling that caused the flooding to occur,” the Housing spokesperson said. “Water to the building was immediately shut off and a plumber was onsite within 30 minutes to complete the repair to the major valve.”
The spokesperson for Housing said that no damage was reported at the time of flooding, and that the affected suites are being monitored. The spokesperson said that Housing will investigate and provide assistance to impacted students as needed in situations like that of the Aug. 19 flooding.
“[I am] disappointed with how Housing has been with us because you can imagine three little girls panicking,” Rubio said. “If it wasn’t for us literally pushing the water out ourselves — ’cause we had to push it into the drain of the shower, that was all literally us for a good hour or more pushing water all [by] ourselves … Anything would help from Housing but they have not responded. They have not reached out and it’s very disappointing.”
Capella’s flooding is one of numerous recent issues students have reported with on-campus housing providing inadequate maintenance. Brendan Smith, a computer science senior, has lived in his Phase 5 University Village apartment for four years, during which the air conditioning broke twice — once two years ago, once this summer — and caused the indoor temperature to exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit both times. Smith said Housing took a week and a half before fixing the AC the first time. For the most recent break, Smith said Housing installed temporary AC units a few days after he and his roommate filed work orders, and a few days after the temporary units’ installation, a maintenance worker fixed the main AC.
“The first time around kind of sucked and I didn’t really understand how long it’d be, but this time they gave a rough timeline,” Smith said. “They said within a week, which still doesn’t really narrow much down, but it’s better than not having said anything at all. I wish they would improve on the timing of things, because to install those window units to temporarily alleviate the problem [took] maybe five minutes. [The] maintenance guy just walked in, put it in, plugged it in and left. So they could have done that at any point in the day … it being 90, 95 degrees seems a bit more important of an issue to take care of.”
ATEC sophomore Oziah Benard said that upon moving into his Phase 7 UV apartment Aug. 17, he and his mother discovered black mold growing out of the vents. Because of the interconnected vent system, Benard said he believes other Phase 7 apartments are also experiencing mold growth. After reporting the issue to the UV Housing Office, Benard said a maintenance worker arrived later that day and cleaned the vent cover, but did not touch the inside of the vent.
“[My mother] looked at me and was like, ‘He’s gonna try and tell us that’s just dirt. It’s not dirt. That’s mold,’” Benard said. “And [the maintenance worker] comes in and sure enough he’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s just dirt, it’s not mold, don’t worry,’ and he puts [the vent cover] back. Nothing inside was cleaned at all. So if you look in the vents, it’s still just as black. He was putting on the vent cover and my mom turned to me and was like, ‘When it grows back, let me know.’”
A spokesperson from Housing told The Mercury in an email that when addressing malfunctioning air conditioning, Housing installs temporary AC units “when possible” and relocates students until repairs are complete “in some cases.” The spokesperson said if a student reports mold or similar growth in their units, Housing will determine the cause, clean the growth and take steps like repairing or removing pieces of walls and relocating the student to a different unit.
“We think that the whole situation is unfair,” Nadal said. “It has all been pretty unreasonable to deal with.”