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Michael Schumacher, construction project manager for TSTC, stands in the lobby of Griffith Hall. The drywall was removed after a pipe burst, revealing bad wiring that posed a fire hazard.

Texas State Technical College officials showed in a tour this week that progress is being made to rewire and rebuild Griffith Hall, the Waco campus’ signature residential hall that was shut down by the state fire marshal this spring.

But it will take several months before the 246-unit building can safely reopen, they said.

A plastic-covered hallway on an upper floor of Griffith Hall, where workers are replacing drywall.

The State Fire Marshal’s Office ordered the college to evacuate the building in March, after inspectors found incorrectly installed wiring, a faulty fire suppression system, and inconsistent fireproofing and caulking. The dangers might have gone unnoticed if not for a pipe that burst in the building’s attic the month before.

“While it’s been unpleasant, unfortunate and has made my job a whole harder, safety is paramount,” said Jeremiah Bland, TSTC Waco’s campus enrollment executive. “So I’m glad in the end that it happened.”

Lee Lewis Construction, the firm that built the $20 million residence hall, is handling the rebuilding and repair along with original subcontractor Bowden Electric.

The college also hired a company to take 360-degree photos of each room before, during and after repairs.

Workers removed one segment of drywall from each wall to show off the rest of the wires before fire marshals conducted a more in-depth investigation.

“It was pretty extensive, but selective demolition,” construction project manager Michael Schumacher said.

A third-party building inspector, Bureau Veritas, follows behind the crews, conducting fire safety, mechanic, electrical, plumbing and framing inspections in each room before drywall goes back up.

“They did an initial inspection and said, ‘This is what you’ve got to fix in this room,’ and then the contractors go to work,” Schumacher said.

Griffith Hall at Texas State Technical College in Waco.

Each report gets sent to the State Fire Marshal’s Office for feedback, and the inspectors will finish with a final inspection report. Once everything is finished and judged safe, the fire marshal will lift the evacuation order that closed the building.

“They stop here periodically, just to check on progress, walk through the building and look at various things,” Schumacher said.

Most units in the building are two-bedroom, two-bathroom units with a common area and kitchenette. Wiring on the third floor has been completed and inspected, and workers are in the middle of installing drywall. The second and first floors, which got the worst of the water damage, are still mostly wood.

The burst pipe was the first red flag, according to Schumacher, because it never should have been full of water. The building is outfitted with two fire sprinkler systems, a “wet” system of water-filled pipes and a “dry” system in the attic that’s supposed to be water-free when not in use, to prevent just the kind of pipe break that occurred.

A pipe in Griffith Hall’s attic froze and burst, damaging the building last year and kicking off an investigation into the fire suppression system. The pipe is part of a “dry” system that was supposed to be devoid of water when it froze, which was TSTC’s first clue that something was amiss.

Bland said when he came to Griffith Hall that day, there was a “two-story waterfall” pouring down from the catwalk on the second floor to the lobby. College officials started to suspect the system was installed incorrectly.

“It was raining,” he said.

When it blew, the water pressure was strong enough to tear wallpaper from drywall. Water poured down into the rest of the building and collected in the lobby, which took the worst of the damage. The first step to dealing with the damage was removing panels of wet drywall, leaving the wiring exposed to the air and to the critical eyes of fire marshals called in by the college to investigate the broken pipe.

Schumacher said aside from wires not being fully secured to boxes and boxes missing bonding wires, there was also temporary lighting from construction left in the building. Various electrical boxes lacked fireproofing or needed more fire caulk.

Other dangers included a 4-inch-wide gap in the center of the building that runs from an expansion joint on the bottom floor to the attic. The fire marshal’s report stated the gap would have given any fire air and a pathway to travel to each floor.

Schumacher said it’s possible the water from the burst pipe pushed insulation out of the wall and created the gap, but he’ll never know for sure.

“At present we have fire wool and fire foam at the top and bottom of each floor,” he said. “That was one big open crack all the way up.”

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Rhiannon Saegert is a graduate of the University of North Texas who formerly worked at The Ardmoreite in Ardmore, Okla., the Denton Record-Chronicle and Eater magazine.

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Michael Schumacher, construction project manager for TSTC, stands in the lobby of Griffith Hall. The drywall was removed after a pipe burst, revealing bad wiring that posed a fire hazard.

A plastic-covered hallway on an upper floor of Griffith Hall, where workers are replacing drywall.

A pipe in Griffith Hall’s attic froze and burst, damaging the building last year and kicking off an investigation into the fire suppression system. The pipe is part of a “dry” system that was supposed to be devoid of water when it froze, which was TSTC’s first clue that something was amiss.

Griffith Hall at Texas State Technical College in Waco.

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