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Robert Bell Flooding

Robert Bell sprung a water main break that caused Ball State to close down the building. An annual inspection of the pipes caused one to burst on the fourth floor of the building around 2 p.m. Monday afternoon, which caused flooding.

Shortly after the pipe burst Ball State sent out emergency notifications to students and fire alarms began to sound to evacuate the building. University Police reported to the scene and instructed professors to grab necessary materials from their offices and to evacuate the building. One member of the Ball State Staff was lucky to have his office missed by the damages.

“We’re on the dry side of the building so I don’t think we will be really affected,” said Steve Schuler of Information Technology Services. “Some people evacuated the building and weren’t able to get back in. I was one of the lucky ones.” 

The majority of the flooding took place in the Southeast corner of the building. This is where the flooding caused the ceiling to cave in a classroom on the third floor.

Ball State sent out an emergency alert at 3:15 p.m. stating that the building would be closed for the remainder of the day and that classes would resume at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning. Bracken Library opened up additional testing lab space in room BL008 to accommodate students who had planned to take tests in the Robert Bell Testing Lab.