It's Still Wet !

By David Weiner, Forty-Niner Online
Sept. 11, 1995

About one-half inch of water entered Room 009 of the Social Science/Public Affairs Building Wednesday, in the same basement level that sustained a flood of about 42,500 gallons of water Aug. 11-13.

Thursday afternoon, workers from Facilities Management, as well as workers from the Central Plant Project contractor and Roofing Forensics, an outside agency, inspected SSPA-009 in an effort to determine what caused the water to get into the room, which was the journalism department's photography studio. The cause of the water penetration was still unknown as of Thursday evening.

Both Jeanne O'Dell, director of Facilities Management, and Richard Johnson, occupational safety specialist for Environmental Health and Safety, have said that the August flood was unrelated to the construction activity on campus for the Central Plant Project.

Instead, Facilities Management said the flood was caused by groundwater that entered the basement through cracks in the subterranean proofing around the building. That flood resulted in the relocation of the Daily Forty-Niner and University Magazine publications. The journalism department, which has occupied the SSPA basement since 1976, is currently seeking a new location on campus.

The 42,500 gallons of groundwater was mixed with hydraulic fuel used to power the building's two elevators. One of the elevators has been out of service since then, and the other is now reserved strictly for disabled passengers. No estimate has been released as to how much it will cost to repair the elevators.

The latest water problem caused little, if any, damage in SSPA-009, since the room had been cleared of most of the photography equipment after the August flood.

Meanwhile, the basement's former occupants continued to report damage to educational and personal materials. Many items damaged or lost in the flood were irreplaceable.

Wayne Kelly, photojournalism option head, reported severe damage to his collection of about 50 Los Angeles Times photographs from the 1960s and '70s. Kelly also lamented the loss of seven or eight slide shows of the U.S. Air Force photojournalism contest and at least 200 photos from the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles archive.

No official report of damage amounts from the flood has been released.