Flood.

Last night, I sat around with Jordan and Mike until about 1:30am. I then walked home to Bromley (residence hall) to catch some sleep before my 8am class on Friday morning. My roommate, Rachel, is asleep in her bed, preparing to take her organic chemistry final at 8am that she has been studying for for days. I check Facebook, strip down to my underwear, and hop into bed, snuggling with my body pillow as I fall into a very, very deep sleep.

Not even an hour later, around what I think is 2:20am (I vaguely recall looking at the clock), the fire alarm begins to sound. If you've been in Bromley recently, you'd know we've had more fire alarms in the past week than the entirety of last quarter. For this reason, Rach and I non-verbally decide to wait this one out and put pillows over our heads. They usually sound for about 10 minutes, and then students are allowed back in.

Since I haven't gotten much sleep this week, after a few moments of putting my pillow over my ears, I pass the fuck out and fall back ito a really, really deep sleep, a weird one, yes, but a deep sleep none the less. I wake about 35 minutes later. The alarm is STILL sounding, and the lamp is on with Rach telling me to get up. As I try and pull myself from my trance, I hop out of bed, and at the same time I feel cold water splashing at my feet, a policeman unlocks our door and tells us to get out now.

Still mostly asleep, Rach and I walk down the stairs - me in my underwear, with no glasses or contacts, and no shoes to speak of. Classy, I know. We were very likely the last out of the building. People said they had waited outside for an hour, but we spent all of 10 minutes outside before everyone was let back in.

I blindly make my way back up to the fifth floor via the stairwell. Now I start getting worried. Is my closet, which holds my guitar, filled with water? There can't be that much more water than when we left, could there? As I walk past the room two doors before mine, a stricken girl walks out carrying a laptop that is absolutely dripping with water. I meet Rach at the door and we open to find about two inches or so of water covering the floor in our room and the bathroom. As I walk toward my closet, the water lessens and by the time I reach my desk I've found dry land. My closet is unaffected and I breathe a deep sigh of relief - my guitar is safe. As are most of my possessions - we were lucky that we didn't keep anything of great importance on the floor.

The mood has severely brightened by now - as least with Rachel and I. Our stuff, minus our carpet, is safe and we start splashing around in the water and wondering how we're going to fix this problem. Spencer and Sarah-Jo's room is worse off than ours, but most of their stuff is alright, too.

We start snapping pictures and I put on my swimsuit. We figured we might as well try to lighten the mood since what's done is done and there isn't much we can do about. If you enter our bathroom, where the water is deepest, you can hear a "waterfall" going on behind the wall that has our mirrors on it.

Through the course of the night, we find things out about what happened. Some twat on the 7th floor for some reason hit, grabbed, or smashed a fire sprinkler that was near the ceiling in the area by the elevators. This triggers the other fire sprinklers to go off and tons of water begins spilling into rooms, and leaking down into lower floors, all the way down to the mezzanine. There were less rooms affected by floor, and ours was the least damaged on ours. The mezzanine, where all the water eventually ended up, was an utter lake of a mess. I was told that when they started to vacuum it up, there were over 200 gallons pulled up.

Rachel and I grabbed a mop and bucket (industrial size) and started to attempt to pick up some of the water plaguing our floor. Four full buckets later, we no longer splashed when we walked, although our carpet is soaked. Adam and Danielle kept us company while we did this. Eventually, a shopvac came by around 5am and helped with some of the water clean up. After we finished some of that, Rachel passed out and I went down to the fourth floor and chatted with Dan and friends until the sun came up and it was time for breakfast. I ate and then went to my 8am, which I dozed in and out of the the full two hours, until it was over and I came home. I'm currently trying to figure out the carpet situation.
I think about 20 rooms were affected, probably about 10 seriously. I don't know who else had big damages like the one woman's laptop. It all feels really surreal, and spending time with Mike and Jordan last night seems like eons ago.