A flood and subsequent fire displaced residents of Hopkins House, a private apartment building north of Homewood Campus, on Friday, April 14. Tenants, many of whom are Hopkins students, were unable to return to their apartments for up to nine days.
Bill Atkinson, a spokesman for Hopkins House management, wrote in an email to The News-Letter that a broken water pipe on the fifth floor flooded the main electric room and caused an electrical fire.
Residents evacuated the building and, according to the statement, nobody was injured. However, some tenants, like School of Nursing graduate student Wendy Wen, worried about potential harm to some residents of Hopkins House.
“We also have babies in the apartment complex, and some babies got sick, and some older adults got sick too,” she said. “We also have a few pregnant women in their first or second trimester, and they’re really fragile and really vulnerable, so I think the management team should take responsibility for them as well.”
Some residents also claimed that the smoke detectors didn’t respond quickly enough and that the alarms should have been louder. Senior Bernard Sarmiento said that while he was glad no one was hurt, he was surprised that everyone heard the alarms.
“That fire alarm on some of those floors was pretty faint,” he said. “If you close your door and you’re asleep, especially if you don’t have good hearing, you could totally miss that fire alarm.”
Chloe Chen, a research assistant at the School of Medicine, said that the smoke was heavy on the lower floors.
“The hall was full of smoke, and it smelled so bad. When I went downstairs — I think maybe seven or eight floors — the smoke was even stronger,” she said.
Sarmiento said that Hopkins House is an old building that often has leaks, as well as an unreliable elevator.
According to Wen, leaks were constant in the building prior to the fire. She stated that although the maintenance had fixed a leak in her wall last year, she was frustrated that Hopkins House sought out short-term solutions as opposed to addressing the larger problem.
“Instead of fixing the entire problem they just wanted to address small leaks here and there,” she said.
Specifically, Wen criticized Hopkins House’s management for failing to take certain preventative measures.
“I think this catastrophe could be preventable because they could have turned off the water so the water wouldn’t continue running down to the basement and into the main circuit.”
In Hopkins House’s statement, Atkinson wrote that the management does not believe the event was preventable because the pipe that burst was less than two years old.
“The water was turned off promptly after the leak was reported,” he wrote. “Once the water is turned off, all the water above the failure [on floors 6-18] still drains due to gravity. It might give the impression water continued to fall after the Hopkins House team was onsite.”
Hopkins House offered hotel accommodations and committed to reimbursing residents beyond what their renter’s insurance covered.
They also offered each resident $25 per day, per room to cover incidentals.
Wen said it was unclear how long Hopkins House would continue to reimburse residents. Management told her she had to begin paying out of pocket for accommodations on Wednesday, April 19.
Wen added that she was frustrated by the lack of transparency from the Hopkins House management.
“They’re constantly changing what they said,” Wen said. “They emailed us and told us different stories, had different people sending emails and the content didn’t match.”
This confusion increased stress levels among Hopkins House residents, some of whom struggled to find a place to stay following the evacuation.
“We really don’t know what’s going on, and they never provided us with a concrete answer on when we’re going to be able to go back to the building,” Wen said. “We have to constantly worry about where we’re going for the night.”
Chen noted that the emails she received the morning after the fire contained inconsistent information regarding the details of the event and how long residents would be displaced.
Although Hopkins House management first said the damage could be fixed by the following Sunday, they later told Chen that it might be one to three weeks before she could move back in.
Hopkins alumna Miranda Zhao also said she might have to pay hotel fees out of pocket.
Zhao stated that she was unwilling to pay for the accommodations because she didn’t trust that Hopkins House would reimburse her.
“They told me that they can pay for $200 if I go find a hotel myself,” she said. “Then I realized I shouldn’t pay myself out of pocket, because what if they don’t reimburse me?”
Sarmiento agreed that communication between Hopkins House management and residents was unreliable at first, but said it was understandable because the event was unexpected.
“The communication that night of the fire and the subsequent morning was pretty bad,” Sarmiento said. “We didn’t know what was going on because they didn’t know. After that point, the communication became better.”
Associate Dean of Student Life Jerry Dieringer wrote in an email to The News-Letter that the University’s staff was notified of the incident early Saturday morning and has been in regular communication with Hopkins House management since this initial contact.
“We’ve received daily communication from Hopkins House with updates and repair status that were used to better assist students that were affected,” Dieringer wrote.
The Office of Student Life offered to help undergraduate and graduate students find temporary housing.
They offered on-campus accommodations to undergraduates, though Dieringer explained that most students were able to find temporary housing on their own or by working with the Hopkins House management.
Sarmiento said that Hopkins House was unresponsive to his communication in the days following the event.
He sent a few emails that went unanswered, although residents were sent information about reimbursements and lease terms, as well as daily updates.
Sarmiento suggested that Hopkins House organize a town hall for residents to make their voices heard.
Zhao said that Hopkins House didn’t respond to her when she asked for more information about the reimbursement.
“We shouldn’t be responsible for this,” Zhao said. “I asked them if they would cover the hotel and they were really not willing to talk at all.”
Chen said that she was still uncertain as to how Hopkins House would reimburse them.
“I really want to know how they will reimburse us,” she said. “I want them to maybe lower our rent.”
Though Wen said she appreciated the hotel accommodations, she wanted Hopkins House to provide a report ensuring residents could live in the building safely and healthily.
She also said she wanted to reexamine her lease.
“We would like to gain the right to break the lease,” she said. “We just realized that we signed a contract that is totally biased towards them in a case like this.”
Wen explained that legally, the tenant contracts for Hopkins House favored the management, as they do not take emergency situations into account.
“The state laws do not require management to provide accommodations for their residents in a case like this. The law is biased towards the management teams as well.”
Atkinson, the spokesman for Hopkins House, wrote that the lease is binding for both the management and its residents. He pointed out how management responded to the fire.
He stated that Hopkins House agreed to reimburse residents even if they didn’t have the insurance required by their lease and also sent money to those who didn’t have the resources for temporary accommodations.
“Hopkins House was and is committed to providing the best possible customer service to our residents,” he wrote. “Hopkins House chose to go above and beyond what was required by the lease because we are committed to our residents.”
Residents began moving back into the building on Sunday, April 23.
Atkinson wrote that the design of permanent repairs has begun and is anticipated to take four months to complete.
He acknowledged the difficulties residents had faced and stressed his commitment to them.
“We know this was incredibly inconvenient for our Residents,” Atkinson wrote. “The safety of all Residents is always our primary concern. The Ownership, Management and Contractor teams have worked closely and continuously to bring a safe and speedy end to this unfortunate and unforeseeable event.”
