Band Room, Others Inundated by Tuesday Flood

A flood inundated the School’s band room, ceramics room, Studio 1 and Studio 2 on Jan. 11. It originated in Studio 1 and affected two keyboards, among other electronics.

The flood most likely started after someone forgot to close a faucet in the Art Department, according to the School’s Maintenance Department. Maintenance made repairs to a sink in Studio 1 during the day, which required shutting off water to the building. Luis Reyes, Director of the Maintenance Department, believes that these repairs played a role in the flood.

“It looks like someone went to Studio 2, turned on the [faucet] and saw there was no water. But it looks like they forgot to shut off the [faucet]” he said. “My guys finished up the repairs and put the water back. They took off, and I got a call around 9pm saying there was an overflow.”

The water leaked into Studio 1, seeping through the floor into the band and ceramics rooms below. The School narrowly avoided significant damage from the flood.

Josh Tower, Director of the Music Department said that he initially worried that two electric keyboards would be destroyed because they were located directly under the leak. Those instruments, along with other electronic equipment, are necessary to run the School’s music program.

However, the two keyboards and a number of affected amplifiers are now back in use. “We really dodged a bullet,” Tower said.

Fortunately, the flood did not affect the School’s music library despite its close proximity to the leak. The decades-old library contains thousands of music compositions purchased by the School. 

“[The library] is a record of everything we’ve done, and it’s a resource for what you can do in the future,” Tower said. “That would have been a real loss.”

This was at least the third flood in the middle school building during this school year, and the second this week. The backstage area of the Mary E. Wilson auditorium flooded on Monday, Jan. 10.

Reyes said that the sink in the theater’s paint room was clogged from years of students pouring paint into its drain. He believes that someone had left the faucet running, causing the flood.

However, witnesses dispute that assessment.

“I heard no sink running,” said dance teacher Katie Kruger, who was working near the paint room just minutes before the flood. “I don’t know. Maybe it was a slow drip that overflowed.”

Tuesday’s flood was also the second band-room flood in the last decade. A malfunction in the exhaust system of the School’s kiln caused the previous one, according to Tower, who witnessed that flood while teaching.

“It was so crazy because, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this dark shadow coming at me,” he said. “I was like, ‘What is that!’ And I realized that it was water.”

Tower blames these continued problems on inadequate facilities.

“We’ve never had an appropriate classroom,” he said. “The space is what it is. It’s not going to get any better.”

“The solution is new classrooms, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, either.”

The School had originally planned a new performing arts center for its upcoming development of the South Campus. However, the School has postponed those plans in recent updates to the project.

“[The flood] is just an example of what happens when you have programs in spaces that they weren’t meant to be in,” Tower said. “It does speak to the fact that we don’t have adequate facilities for the performing arts.”