Storm delivers puddles inside and out

By Sean Orfila
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer

It was a wet day for many students who walked into flooded classrooms and leaking roofs yesterday.

Outside of the Social Sciences building, an ankle-deep puddle of yellow water gathered into a pond among the woodchips and plants beside the sidewalk. The puddle slowly flowed in a steady stream down the stairs, into a drain that appeared to have flooded the night before, leaving most of the nearby classrooms and offices drenched in two inches of rainwater.

On the other side of the building, water poured from the roof, onto the stairs of the basement. There was no damage to the upper floors of the building.

"There's multiple issues here," said Robert Quirk, director of facilities management at Cal State Long Beach. Quirk said the first rains of the season tend to be the worst. "We haven't had rains in about six months," Quirk said.

The water damage is often combined with a critical design flaw on campus — flat roofs. Quirk said there is almost a million square feet of flat roofs at CSULB. The roofs may allow pools of water to seep through buildings and cause damage.

Yesterday afternoon, water was still seeping through floor tiles that were saturated from the storm. Quirk also said that the Social Sciences basement is already 15 feet below sea level, making cleanup difficult in heavy rain.

Maurice Abury, a maintaince worker at CSULB, used a Shop-Vac to clean up the pools with his coworkers. Abury said that when he came to work at 4 a.m., the basement was dry. After the heavy rains began, at around 6 a.m. the flooding began, said Maurice. The water was still seeping through the tiles after workers sucked the water into giant vacuums.

Quirk said that property damage was minimal on campus and that he couldn't make an estimate on the amount of money it would cost for cleanup. No computers or expensive equipment were reported damaged to Quirk.

Rooms LA3 204 and 205 sustained flood damage, but both were cleaned before classes started. The Theatre and Music buildings also had roof leaks, according to Quirk.

According to the National Weather Service showers should taper off today with highs in the mid 60s.