Davenport pipe valve bursts, some residents face flooding in rooms

A valve pipe burst in Davenport College late Wednesday night, setting off the fire alarm and bringing multiple emergency vehicles to the site.

Around 11:20 p.m. on Wednesday, fire alarms rang throughout Davenport, and a nearby police car swerved backwards around the corner of York and Elm streets to investigate the situation. Within minutes, two firetrucks and an ambulance arrived at the York Street entrance, while Davenport residents congregated in the courtyard. Davenport Master Richard Schottenfeld said he did not know for sure what the cause was, but suspected that it was a faulty water pipe.

“At this point I don’t know anything — I’m waiting for the report,” Schottenfeld said. “I think there’s a problem with a pipe in there, and it’s the second time it has happened if that’s the case.”

Yale Police Department officers later confirmed that a valve pipe on the fourth floor of Entryway C had exploded, triggering the fire alarm and an emergency response. Steven Miller ’08 said the fire alarms went off for no more than 10 minutes after the firefighters arrived on scene.

For residents of Entryway C, the faulty pipe posed more of a problem. Gussie Binns-Berkey ’10, who lives on the third floor of C, said the water started flowing down the entryway staircase once the firefighters turned the alarms off.

“I’m a little bit worried — it’s just the floors that are wet and the common room — but it’s not dripping through the ceiling,” she said.

An emergency worker reported that suite C41 suffered the most water damage, although C13 also experienced some flooding. Only one student in C41 was on-site. The rest of her roommates, she said, were at Toad’s Place.

But for Davenport residents, the fire alarms are nothing new.

“I was here when the fire alarm went off in the morning last week,” Binns-Berkey said.

—Patrick Lee