UCO’s historic Thatcher Hall flooded Saturday

A pipe burst on the third floor of Thatcher Hall on Saturday, causing damaging floods to all floors of the north half of the east wing of the building on the University of Central Oklahoma campus, according to campus officials.

The affected areas were primarily faculty and staff offices, UCO Vice President for Communications Adrienne Nobles told The Vista in an email.

UCO student Alejandro Pina Zuniga reported the burst to UCO police after he heard water dripping in the building while working on Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) activities.

Pina Zuniga said he and two other students noticed water leaking from Room 236, and several different rooms.

After calling UCO police, who alerted UCO Facilities, Pina Zuniga went to Room 330 to investigate. There, he heard water flowing into the room behind the locked door.

Facilities arrived and opened the door to be greeted by a stream of water which flooded the hallway.

Only the affected areas of the building are closed. The UCO Facilities team is working with faculty and staff to move their personal belongings.

They have valved off the water system to the affected area of the building. The unaffected areas have had water restored as of Monday.

“Damage assessment is ongoing, and we do not have an estimate on cost or reopening of the impacted area at this time,” said Nobles.

A drying room has been established for affected items in the basement of Thatcher Hall.

Thatcher Hall houses ROTC, The Center and other university initiatives. The building was built in 1937.

This is not the first time a UCO building has faced a pipe burst. Earlier this year, the University Suites flooded in January.

“A lot of our buildings on UCO’s campus are old,” said UCO President Todd Lamb in a Feb. 16 interview with The Vista. “Once you’ve deferred maintenance it doesn’t get any better, and it doesn’t stay the same, it just continues to get worse, and if it continues to get worse it becomes more expensive.”

UCO is a flagship Regional University System of Oklahoma (RUSO) school and is the largest RUSO school. However, UCO received the same amount of funding from the state legislature as five other RUSO schools, said Lamb in a Sept. 4 interview.

UCO received $3,579,545 in appropriations from the state legislature for deferred maintenance.

“It was not much,” said Lamb in the same interview. “They spread it out pretty thinly.”