Water pipe bursts outside Lora Robins

A burst pipe started shooting water several feet into the air outside Lora Robins Court on Oct. 20 as a construction crew worked to repair a broken line going into the Westhampton Deanery. 

The crew removed a piece of concrete that was attached to the pipe, which burst, said Frank McMurrough, mechanical supervisor of university facilities, who was at the site.

“It’s a pretty normal repair that we do, it’s just sometimes you can’t see what’s in the ground and [the pipe] was just connected to concrete,” McMurrough said.

The issue should be fixed by the end of the day, but McMurrough called the burst “pretty wild.” 

Although work crews isolated the deanery, water elsewhere on campus should be unaffected, McMurrough and other members of the work crew said. Water inside Lora Robins Court did not shut off, according to residents of the building.

“I just saw a ton of water spraying the building,” said first-year Anna Tamura, who said she was surprised by the incident.  

Contact city and state writer Nick Mossman at nick.mossman@richmond.edu and city and state editor Eileen Pomeroy at eileen.pomeroy@richmond.edu.