Hundreds of students relocated after dorm floods on EKU campus

Some students at Eastern Kentucky University had a rough opening weekend. Students living in the Clay Hall dormitory on campus had to leave the building after a sprinkler system was inadvertently set off Saturday.

The water flooded eight floors of the dorm.

Bryan Mackinen is the chief campus operations officer for EKU. He said the university has been able to get the impacted students into some kind of housing.

“So we opened up buildings close by to temporarily have students have a place to go who needed to stay on campus, and in those early hours of the morning they started moving individuals, all impacted individuals that wanted to stay on campus, they found them a spot on campus, with a bed.”

Mackinen said the university is helping those students with damaged computers and text books.

“We have rental laptop, rental computer, rental calculators, the text books, if text books were damaged, we're making sure things, those critical items needed for students to learn, we're making sure we have availability to those and the text books, making sure we have a replacement for those physically damaged.”

Mackinen said with the clean up needed, including some renovations, the university hopes to have the rooms available for use by the beginning of the spring semester.

He said around 220 students have been relocated and 140 students will continue to live in Clay Hall in parts of the building not impacted by the water damage.

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