A nor’easter that passed through New England on Monday caused damage to a Brandeis building and a power outage at the Charles River (Grad) apartments. The storm brought high winds, heavy rain and flooding to the New England area.
The International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO), which is in Kutz Hall, was forced to close Monday, March 5 as a result of the storm on Friday. The high winds caused one of the membranes of the upper roof on the Kutz building to detach itself and leaks in the upper floor offices.
Facilities Services employees quickly responded to the water damage, and a contractor reattached the membrane to the building on Saturday and Sunday.
ISSO director Jodi Hanelt acknowledged Facilities Services’ hard work, stating, “The facilities team really worked hard this weekend to take care of us, and we really appreciate that.”
Though the ISSO was closed on Monday, the office was still monitoring the email account for emergency matters. The ISSO re-opened on Tuesday, March 6.
The power went out in the Charles River apartments around 4:30 p.m. on Monday when a tree fell on Charles River Road. The electric company, Eversource, worked to remove the tree and had restored the power between 8 and 9 p.m., according to Charles River/567 Senator Oliver Price. Brandeis Police and staff from the Department of Community Living were also on-site.
During the outage, backup generators continued to power the building card readers and emergency lights in the stairways, according to Price. A storm in late October caused an outage at Grad which lasted from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. and knocked out power to the card readers. Staff had to escort students to their buildings with Shabbat keys as the storm continued.
Price described the recent outage as much less severe.
In an email to Grad residents at 6:22 p.m. Monday, Area Coordinator Amanda Drapcho informed students of the outage and encouraged them to contact Public Safety if a card swipe reader stopped working.
“Please use caution during this time as you navigate Charles River. At this time, we do not have an estimate of when the power will be restored, but we will provide more information if it becomes available,” wrote Drapcho.
