Cal Poly students in six residence halls were left without water on Saturday due to an emergency water outage.
The outage left the yak?it?ut?u, Sierra Madre, Yosemite, Tenaya, Muir and Trinity residence halls without water. The Vista Grande dining facility also closed its restrooms due to the water outage, but kept dining services open.
Assistant Director of Facility Operations and Sustainability Suzanne LaCaro said the university turned off the water in response to two broken pipes. Staff is still trying to pinpoint the leak.
Around 8:15 a.m., Cal Poly responded to water issues outside the back of the South Mountain residence halls. At 9:30 a.m., water was gushing down the stairs leading up to the dorm. In addition, the entire back of the dorm was flooded.
By the afternoon, Trinity and Muir were still without water. University Housing supplied portable bathrooms nearby for students to use.
Students resorted to accessing other dorms for water. The University Union (Bldg. 65), Mott Gym (Bldg. 42) and the Rec Center’s (Bldg. 43) showers, bathrooms and water were available to students as well.
Bottled water was distributed in the lobbies of impacted residence halls. The fire alarms were still operational, but University Housing initiated hourly fire walks as a precaution while the fire sprinkler system was off.
The university said it didn’t know how long repairs would take. Water came back on around 2 p.m for Tenaya Hall. Since then, an email was released by University Housing with plans to assist students still impacted by the outage.
Coordinator of Student Development Johnny Moreno informed Tenaya residents that the “bike rack behind Tenaya is going to be moved to do work related to the water.” He said he recommends that if students have bikes currently housed there, to move them to the temporary bike rack located across the street from Tenaya and the various others around the South Mountain red bricks.
University Housing told students to contact a resident adviser, coordinator of student development or any Housing staff if they have health and safety concerns.
University Housing said it would send students more information as it becomes available.
