On Tuesday at 10:36 a.m. Fairfield University students received an alert that there was a water main break on North Benson Road that would result in the town’s water company turning off the supply until it was fixed.
At 9:39 p.m., 11 hours after the initial message, a second message was sent saying that the break was still not fixed, but if students needed, they could go to the RecPlex to use the showers, sinks, restrooms, and more.
It appears the southside of campus (Mahan, Kostka, Claver, and Meditz), were the most impacted by the loss of water.
Sophomore Coco Debartlo lives in Claver and decided to head over to the library yesterday evening after she realized that her sink wasn’t working–she quickly learned that other students had the same idea.
“[Last night] There were long lines at the library bathrooms with girls and their skincare bags getting ready for bed because no one had water,” Debartlo said.
Junior Stephen Luccarelli, who lives in Mahan, decided to wash his clothes early this morning because he assumed a lot of people would be trying to use the machines today.
“I put my clothes in and came back an hour later and all of my white clothes weren’t white anymore. They were brown.”
Even though water access had returned, it was running dark brown for many people.
A handful of students who live nearby even chose to go home for the night.
Junior Meghan Fenton commented that she decided to go home to shower and do laundry as she lives nearby in Stratford, which changed her plan for the day. She added that she was signed up to take a Zumba class with friends but she canceled to go home.
Senior Nora Jacobi also opted to go home for the night with her roommate who lives nearby and returned in the morning.
However, some buildings never lost water, such as the townhouses.
Juniors Katharine Gutkoski, Emma Marelli, and Grace Karangekis live in the townhouses and claimed that they never lost water access.
“We always had water. I don’t know why, I saw the text that they were turning it off. But it didn’t affect us,” Gutkoski commented.
Though the two messages sent by the university were 11 hours apart, it’s difficult to estimate how long the water was shut off because no other updates were provided by the university.
