Update 10:37: 12 rooms have standing water in them and 23 rooms are “affected” by the water. President John DeGioia and Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson have joined students in Sellinger Lounge where Student Affairs has provided students with ice cream and pizza. Olson said students would have to leave rooms for a “few days, at most,” and that the University is bringing in high-intensity cleaners.

Update 8:58: At an informational meeting in Sellinger, Vice President of University Safety Rocco DelMonaco said that it will take the University 60 to 90 minutes to do an “inventory” of the dorm. Some students will be allowed back into the dorm tonight. Those whose floors were affected by flooding could either stay with a friend or be assigned a place to stay by housing services.

Update 8:31: An RA said that some of the water flooding the third floor had seeped down to the second floor. RAs collected phone numbers from students at an informational meeting in Sellinger Lounge and will contact students to tell them where they can stay tonight.

Update 8:19: The post below now includes information from the D.C. Fire Department and EMS hotline.

Update 7:57: An anonymous RA said that New South will not reopen for a few hours and that some students may have to sleep elsewhere, possibly in the ICC.

Sometime before 7:00 p.m. this evening, a fire broke out in an empty dormitory room on the third floor of New South.

A recorded message on the D.C. Fire Department and EMS hotline said that fire fighters were dispatched just before 7:00 p.m. When they responded to the scene, they evacuated the building and found that the fire had been effectively controlled by the sprinkler system. The fire appears to have been accidental. There were no injuries and only “minimal damage” to a laptop and some other items, the recording said.

According to Kelley Kidd, who said that the fire started in her room, she was sitting in her friend’s nearby dormitory when they “heard a big bang” and then a fire alarm coming from another room. The floor’s Resident Assistant found her to tell her that the alarm was coming from her room. Kidd and her friend opened the door and could see a lot of smoke, she said.

“There was a fire on my desk, about that high and that wide,” Kidd said, motioning that the fire was about two feet tall. “It looked like some books were on fire and it looked like it was beside my laptop.” (Full disclosure: This semester, Kidd wrote a weekly feature for Vox Populi.)

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In 2007, a blaze broke out at the Georgetown Public Library, destroying large portions of the building and leaving the neighborhood without a permanent library for years.  Soon after the fire, the city sued the contractor that had been doing repairs to the library at the time for $13 million, alleging that the heating guns used started the fire.

Unfortunately for D.C., the contractor is contesting that claim, and the lawsuit has revealed that D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services did a less than stellar job investigating the fire.  Washington City Paper’s Jason Cherkis unearthed court documents and e-mails between the FEMS and the Office of the Attorney General that show the full extent of the investigators’ negligence.

Cherkis’s post is a must-read, but here are a few of the major allegations:

• Lt. Craig Duck led the investigation despite having no training in fire investigation.
• Duck thoroughly bungled the investigation, throwing away crucial evidence.  The evidence he did hold on to was not properly secured or catalogued.
• Investigators may have breached national standards by not making and keeping notes while investigating.
• FEMS was extremely uncooperative when OAG asked them for the requisite documentation from the investigation, failing to hand over investigators’ notes and photographs.

Photo from Flickr user randomduck, used under a Creative Commons license.

A recent report lists 34 locations in the District that the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority and the Fire & EMS Department have identified as having fire hydrants that need “special attention”—and Georgetown University is on that list, according to WUSA9.

According to the WUSA9 article, there are a variety of potential reasons why the University is on the list; possibilities include small water mains, hydrant configuration, topography, access, and the possibility of private hydrants not regulated by WASA.

[DC Fire & EMS Department spokesman Pete] Piringer says if your neighborhood or building is on the list there is no need to panic. He says the fire department has put plans in place to make sure there is an adequate water supply to fight fires.

The list was compiled after firefighters had difficulty suppressing a recent fire on Chain Bridge Road due to low water pressure in nearby hydrants. Hydrant problems also resulted in extra damage when the Georgetown Public Library caught fire a couple years ago.

Georgetown isn’t the only local university to make “special attention” list—Catholic, Gallaudet, Howard’s Law School and George Washington’s Mount Vernon campus are on it as well.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan. Photo from Flickr user Shannon Coffey, used under a Creative Commons license.