Accident causes building flood

The Anthropology Annex basement flooded with gray water Sept. 1, leaving several archaeology labs ruined, graduate student and faculty labs unusable, and a basement ceramics class without a classroom.

Mike Tuttle, manager of UNM’s Risk Management department, said Custom Grading Inc., the company McCarthy Building Companies Inc. contracted to build the new Science and Technology building next to the Anthropology Annex, made a mistake. He said McCarthy Building Companies’ insurance company will reimburse UNM for damages.

“It’s going to take a few months to sort out, but it was just one of those accidents,” he said. “They felt bad about it, and they want to make it right,” he said.

An incident report McCarthy filed said a grading operation caused the flood.

Custom Grading covered up a manhole without notifying McCarthy or UNM, according to the report. In the next 24 hours, the sewer water backed up to the Anthropology Annex and flooded the basement. As soon as the problem was discovered, the manhole was vacuumed out and flow resumed.

“Sometime during the day on Aug. 30, Custom Grading, Inc. was performing the rough grading activity on the southwest side of the new Science & Math Learning Center site,” the report said. “During the grading operation, one of the sewer manholes was
displaced and a large quantity of dirt filled the manhole.”

The incident form also said the Anthropology Annex doesn’t have back check valves installed in its sewer system, which likely played a role in the flood.

Wirt Wills, an anthropology professor, said the basement was filled with three to six inches of gray water that came up through drains in the floor. He said the Annex was built in 1930, and it has not undergone any major infrastructure renovations since it was built.
“The basement floods almost every year. We actually lost one of our faculty members after a flood destroyed her lab and all the research she was working on,” Wills said. “There have been at least 10 major floods in the last 15 years, although this was the first flood to originate inside the building.”

Wills and several graduate student volunteers spent two days moving research, equipment and artifact collections out of the basement and into storage, and he said faculty members and graduate students’ projects are stored, among other places, on office floors. Research has been temporarily halted, and faculty and graduate students are dispersed across campus.

Wills said the flood ruined a DNA lab, and the ceramics class that was meeting in the basement will be will re-located.
“We don’t currently have a timeline for repairs, but this has already been a major setback for research,” Wills said. “No one seems to be fixing the problem. We’ve requested upgrades, but I don’t think we are very high on anyone’s list.”