On Tuesday, as students on the Hill were preparing to go home
for Thanksgiving and enjoy a few days of no class, the smell called
the “Hedrick funk” got funkier than ever.
A main line backup in Rieber Hall resulted in a sewage overflow
that reached as far as Sproul Hall and Charles E. Young Drive
Tuesday night.
Clogged pipes caused sewage to rise up through manholes and pour
down the steps leading onto the Puzzles patio.
Students, walking out of their dorm rooms expecting to get a
meal at the popular nighttime eatery, plugged their noses,
wondering what the smell was.
“It makes me want to fall down and die,” said Kevin
Chang, a first-year undeclared student, when describing the
stench.
The backup was essentially a clogged pipe caused by a buildup of
grease from the Rieber kitchen that built up in the sewer line,
which is the main infrastructure for getting rid of waste, said
Gail Cowling, executive officer of Facilities Management and
Environmental Health & Safety.
Residential assistants patrolled the area, telling people
Puzzles was closed.
“I stepped in that (stuff),” said Jon English, a
first-year political science student who was on the scene.
“It was like a fountain.”
The call to Facilities Management came in at 11:10 p.m. and the
leak was stopped by 11:45 p.m., Cowling said. Plumbers quickly
responded to the call with a sewer jet, which blew out the stoppage
and cleared the drain.
After the pipes were cleared, the ground the sewage had covered
was bleached for health reasons.
“It was a relatively small emergency. Everything was
cleaned up relatively fast,” Cowling said.
Since this incident was an infrastructure problem outside the
residential halls’ jurisdiction, Facilities Management,
rather than the maintenance crew, responded to the problem.
Sewage leaks, such as this one, are not new occurrences at
UCLA.
“It’s been a problem that we experience throughout
campus wherever there are food facilities, such as Taco Bell and
LuValle. We used to have the problem a lot on ASUCLA food
facilities,” Cowling said.
Work to resolve such issues had already begun in the central
part of campus with the installation of clarifiers, mechanisms that
separate grease in pipes in a way similar to lint traps in laundry
dryers. Afterwards, only the clarifier needs to be cleaned, versus
having to clean out the entire pipe.
Plans to install similar clarifiers on the Hill are also being
considered, Cowling said.
Other measures to avoid such incidents include cleaning the
storm drain on a regular basis, and having preventative
maintenance.
“We can make sure the drains are clear of pine needles and
such before the rainy season starts. We can do preventative
maintenance, but you can never truly avoid these problems,”
Cowling said.
With reports from Derek Lazzaro, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.