Township Discussion on College Floods
SPECIAL NOTE – This discussion of the water damage at Antioch College has been updated with new comments by Chief Altman – see below
This Miami Township Trustees Meeting was shown on the public access cable television channel in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This portion of the meeting shows Miami Township Fire-Rescue Chief Colin Altman reporting on the water damage at Antioch College as of January 5, 2009.
On February 11, Chief Altman received a transcript of the meeting and made the following comments. Chief Altman’s comments should be considered an essential part of the record.
Download: The Video Transcript with Comments (184 kb)
READ: The Antioch Papers’ article that accompanies the transcript
————————————-
Some statements by Chief Altman on the video:
“The University has been very cooperative in dealing with us and fire safety matters on campus.”
“It should be noted that this meeting was held at the end of a day in which I’d been up since 4:30 am, at a house fire in which one of our firefighters suffered a near fatal accident. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind!”
“At the time, the thought was that the pipe had frozen in South causing the leak. Further investigation revealed that freezing was not the cause; a pipe hanger had broken loose, causing the pipe to drop and break, allowing the compressed are inside to exhaust, and water to fill the pipe.”
“Again, at the time of this meeting, I had been told that the Theatre had flooded due to a broken sprinkler pipe. I’ve since been told that this was in fact due to a large roof leak, in accordance with Louise Smith’s letter.”
————————————-
The Antioch Papers article on the video and transcript states
Recently Chief Altman reviewed a transcript of the January 5 meeting and corrected the record by saying “that freezing was not the cause” of the South Hall leak and that the Theater had flooded due to “a large roof leak” (24). Chief Altman changed the record based on information given to him by Antioch University. Chief Altman never examined the broken pipes and roof leaks at Antioch. It is not his job. The responsibility for that job would fall to the manager of campus buildings, the Vice-Chancellor of the University and its CFO, Tom Faecke.