[Alex2614]

So I meant to post this a couple weeks ago when this happened, but still appropriate now. Around 12:30am on a Saturday night, right as we were getting ready to pack up and leave, only a few people left in the shop, this happened. A sprinkler head randomly popped and started gushing (no, not sprinkling, it was malfunctioning and just gushing) water into our shop. Our shop is the single lowest point in WVU's 7-story White Hall (essentially a sub-basement), so ALL the water for the sprinkler system went through. Because we are at WVU's Physics Building White Hall, this will be forever known as the "White Falls Affair."

First thought - GET THE ROBOTS OUT OF HERE.

Second thought - FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP THE WATER. Turns out, if you shut the power down for the building, the reserve power kicks in, which powers the pumps for the sprinklers. You essentially have to wait for the fire department to show up.

Third thought - LET'S FIGURE OUT HOW TO REMOVE A COUPLE THOUSAND GALLONS OF WATER OUT OF OUR SHOP. (Oh, and apparently the drains were clogged too... second picture).

Fourth thought - OKAY, LET'S MAKE SURE WE CAN GET BACK TO WORK TOMORROW.

Around 4:00am, we finally left, soaking wet with some industrial dehumidifiers running and we were back to work on Sunday.

Realizations:

Sprinkler water is very very cold if you stand under it with blankets to try to suppress it. It also comes out with tremendous pressure and force. (the first picture is a couple students and I doing just that).

The totes and recycling bins come in REALLY handy if you want to move lots of water. Water game confirmed.

The RoboRios are waterproof. We had one sitting in the water for several minutes and it was working just fine. Water game confirmed.

Even when your shop is being flooded, and half of your stuff is being destroyed, you're soaking wet, freezing cold, exhausted (it's 3am), and you're questioning how things will get back to normal again, you can still make jokes about it as you're cleaning up and be very light-hearted about it. I.e. you can joke about how you always wanted to wash your drillbits or we've been meaning to mop the floor, or that you now realize why FIRST never does water games. Water game confirmed.