Shippensburg University officials and campus partners are continuing to investigate the water main break that flooded the area outside of Naugle Hall on Oct. 7 in the afternoon.

The break occurred shortly before 5 p.m. and prompted a campus-wide water outage that lasted about four hours. Water did not return to Naugle Hall until about 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

“The water line was rather deep and close to a building and required extensive excavation to reach. That was the complicating factor,” said Megan Silverstrim, SU Director of Communications and Marketing. 

Silverstrim noted that the kind of break that occurred is standard and does commonly occur in water system infrastructures. Campus facilities took the lead on the repair, but an outside excavation company assisted with reaching the pipe that needed to be replaced. An estimate of what the repairs will cost the university will take time, she said.

There was a minimal amount of flooding reported in Etter Health Center, but it was fully operating by the start of the next business day and elevators remained in operation. In terms of any long-lasting effects, “crews will work to back fill the hole where the pipe was replaced, but beyond that everything is open and operational,” Silverstrim said 

The university is unable to determine exactly how much water was released due to buildings being metered differently than homes and business, but “a significant amount of the water originated from the water tower,” Silverstrim said.

In the midst of officials working to resolve the break, the Naugle Hall staff was preparing to host its late-night “Naugle Hall-o-Ween” event in the CUB, which had been planned for weeks.

The staff began setting up around 7 p.m., and was made aware shortly before 8 p.m. that dining services would not be able to fulfill the catering order, according to Naugle resident assistant Greg Schultz.

Schultz reached out to his self-proclaimed “bestie,” SU President Charles Patterson, to request delivery pizzas from Pizza Man. 

“When Greg Schultz reached out to me about Ship Dining being impacted and having to cancel a late-night Naugle Hall event, we were already working with VP for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Lorie Sheetz to order and deliver pizzas and bottled water to the residence halls,”  Patterson said.

Members of the university’s dining team had communicated with Patterson and Sheetz that offerings in Reisner Dining Hall and Burgers & Fries would be heavily limited until water service was returned, Sheetz said.

“It was important to President Patterson and myself to have pizza sent to each of the residence halls and to also have pizza sent to the CUB for the Naugle program to provide a little comfort during this difficult time,” Sheetz said.

Additionally, there were plans to deliver water bottles to each residence hall, but water was restored to each building except Naugle before this could happen.

“We still delivered over 350 bottles of water on Saturday night to Naugle and another 350 bottles of water on Sunday,” Sheetz said. 

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