Steamed Internet users in the Bateman Physical Science Center can blame a ruptured pipe for network outages that occurred shortly after 3 p.m. on Monday.
A steam leak resulted in an estimated $50,000 in damage, flooding the equipment room located in the basement of the B-wing. The leak damaged a server, causing wings B, C, D, E, and G to lose Internet access.
Dennis Neff, an electrician with Facilities Management, said there were several inches of standing water in the room when he arrived.
"When they opened the door to the room it was like the best steam bath you could ever have," Neff said.
Lane Briley, building manager for the chemistry department, said no one was hurt and the outage affected conference rooms and general research labs.
He said the affected areas of the building are not heavily in use during the afternoon and were not as negatively affected as they could have been.
Briley said the response time from Facilities Management was good. He said departmental personnel also taped off the area so students wouldn't enter.
Neff said ASU police officers were the first to respond to the scene after a heat detector triggered in a maintenance duct.
Neff said the steam could have sparked a larger problem.
"Water and electricity don't mix," he said. "If this stuff did get wet it could have blown up," Neff added, referring to a number of electrical boxes in the room.
Briley said the flooding was a relatively minor inconvenience when compared to the damage the steam caused.
"Steam causes bigger problems because it is airborne and conductive; that can be a bigger problem because any circuits that are affected must be shut down and dried out," Briley said.
Computer communications specialist Franco Lomonte, of the University's Information Technology Department, said service in the affected wings would likely be operational sometime today.
"As long as the water dries out, we should be able to replace everything tomorrow," Lomonte said.
He said the steam and water destroyed a Cisco Switch, a part of the computer server.
"But at least the equipment we will replace it with is an upgrade," Lomonte said.
Funding to replace the technology was not determined Monday evening, but Lomonte said it would be resolved after a risk management report was submitted to Facilities Management.
Even though plumbers were forced to shut off several heating valves, Briley said the building should still be a comfortable temperature for normal activities.
Lomonte said the damage that shut down the server in the building was entirely unrelated to Internet slowdowns that were experienced in other parts of the campus Monday.
"Those problems were caused by a [Denial of Service] attack that originated from the Coor and Engineering Buildings," Lomonte said. "It has been non-stop for us all day long."
Reach the reporter at mark.saxon@asu.edu.
