Students left soaked after pipe bursts inside University of Calgary
Posted Feb 4, 2019 5:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) – A shocking scene in the link between the Science buildings at the University of Calgary after a sprinkler pipe burst soaking the students below on Monday afternoon.
It happened around 1:30 p.m. as students were travelling between classes and using the corridors.
“I just had lunch at Subway in Mac Hall and was coming up the underground passage way because it’s freezing outside but I was just coming up and I heard a big boom, some type of commotion or explosion, I don’t know,” said education and international studies student Austin Lowry. “Didn’t really know what to expect but as I rounded the corner there was a huge group of people and water pouring through the ceiling.”
Video that Lowry and others posted online shows water dripping initially through the drop ceiling before a geyser tears its way through a tile, raining onto the floor below.
“The alarms were going off, telling everyone to get out of the building, just the last thing I expected pretty much,” said Lowry. “You know you go to the wave pool or whatever at one of the leisure centres here and the big bucket drops except the bucked didn’t empty, it just kept coming.”
Mechanical engineering student Dominic Ling was also in the hallway at the time shooting video of the incident.
“Everyone was slowing down to look at something so we got there and saw that water was dripping out of the ceiling at a pretty fast rate, I took my phone out and started recording and the water starts coming out really hard and before we knew it the ceiling actually burst and the water came out …. unexpected,” said Ling.
He says people tried their best to bypass the puddles but thinks some of them may have gotten hit from the waist-down.
“You could hear it rumbling in the ceiling but the big increase in pressure was like a water jet, a big powerful one,” he said.
First responders were called to assess the scene.
The University of Calgary says a sprinkler line break occurred in the link and they will keep it closed until Tuesday.
