Freezing temperatures caused pipes to burst in three residence halls over the weekend, including Stevenson Hall on Friday and Thomas and Taylor halls on Saturday.

Charleston temperatures reached a high of 10 degrees on Friday and 23 degrees on Saturday.

In Stevenson Hall, an open window on the sixth floor caused the heater in a resident’s room to freeze, resulting in a burst heat pipe, said Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dining.

Hudson said the incident occurred sometime during the day on Friday. He said he has not heard of any significant damages, and the pipe itself has been fixed.

“They were in there pretty quick to clean it up,” he said.

In Thomas Hall, a pipe in the sprinkler system froze and burst at the bottom of the South Tower stairwell sometime between 2:30 and 3 p.m. Saturday.

In addition to flooding the lobby with about an inch of water, the broken pipe caused the fire alarm to go off. The building was then evacuated and the fire department responded.

Hudson said the building was cleared for about two hours, which delayed move-ins; however, Saturday was a slow day with not a lot of activity going on.

“There’s not a lot of people back yet, so it didn’t affect a lot of people,” he said. “There were about 20 people in the lobby of Andrews waiting to be let back in.”

He said after the fire department isolated the area with the broken pipe, they reactivated the sprinkler system in the rest of the building and allowed students to return to their rooms while Building Service Workers cleaned up the water in the lobby.

“It hasn’t been too big of an interruption,” he said.

Sometime between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Saturday, an open window caused another sprinkler pipe to freeze and burst in a mechanical room in Taylor Hall, Hudson said.

He said because the fire department was already in Thomas Hall at the time, they were able to move over to the other hall quickly and address the broken fixture before it could cause damage or release a significant amount of water.

The area in Thomas Hall was cleaned up by 6 p.m., and Hudson said the pipe would be fixed on Monday.

Hudson said pipes freezing and bursting does not happen often.

“It occasionally happens, especially when you have subzero weather you have those kinds of things that happen, but it’s not a common occurrence,” he said.

Stephanie Markham can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].