A flood on the fifth floor of Brady Residence Hall around 10 p.m. Thursday evening caused a full evacuation of the building.
Nearly 300 University of St. Thomas students were not allowed back into the residence hall until around midnight, with many students staying in other dorms or going home for the night.
“At the moment we don’t really know exactly what happened, we know that a pipe burst … Last year it was caused by a ball being thrown so it could’ve been the same thing, but it could’ve been something else …There’s nothing confirmed yet, at least through our ears,” third floor resident assistant Alex McChurch said.
The water from the burst pipe trickled down to the fourth floor as well. Reports of how many rooms on the fourth floor were affected vary. Shortly after the pipe broke, McChurch said only one room was impacted, while a resident of the fourth floor said three rooms, including her own, were affected by the water.
McChurch said that the floors below the fourth were not affected.
“We still have to do a room check, but at the moment, everything looks fine,” he said.
As of midnight, the fifth floor of Brady was still damp, with fans scattered throughout the hall and students still bustling about. Furniture items on both the fourth and fifth floors were turned over and placed near fans in an attempt to dry them. The humidity was felt throughout the entire hall and a musty stench permeated the area.
McChurch said that students who needed access to their rooms on lower floors were allowed to be escorted in to quickly grab what they needed but that while the building was being cleared and investigated, the university aimed to keep as many students out as possible.
“I was in the theater room of the basement watching awesome television, and I heard a buzz from outside. At first we didn’t know what it was, ‘cause the fire alarm wasn’t going off in the theater room,” first-year Brady resident Tommy Tilbury said. “Sure enough it was going off in the halls, so we immediately bailed. I heard from folks on the fifth floor that a pipe exploded, and the great Brady flood had struck again.”
This is the second time Brady Hall has had flooding within a year. Residents evacuated the building in December of 2024 after a football broke a sprinkler head on the third floor.
The Crest reached out to university facilities management at 9:38 Friday morning, but they declined to provide a comment.
The Crest left phone messages with management in both Residence Life and Public Safety, but they had not yet responded by the time this story was published.
This is a developing story.
Angeline Patrick Pacheco can be reached at patr3972@stthomas.edu.
