UPDATE, 10:30 a.m.-- The LRC will reopen at noon. Water and electricity have been restored.
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MARQUETTE, MI-- A break in a water main has caused flooding in the basement and sub-basement of NMU's Learning Resources Center.
The break happened early Tuesday morning in Lot 28 by an LRC generator, prompting officials to cut power around 7:22 a.m. to portions of the building, including the WNMU-FM and WNMU-TV broadcasting studios, which had to go off the air.
Water cascaded down the walls of emergency stairwells and gushed through the ceiling of the Public Radio 90 CD library. The flooding created a river behind the building down Tracy Street, which had to be closed off to traffic. A front end loader was called in to clear ice and mud from the nearest frozen drain.
Sub-zero temperatures hindered outdoor operations and very likely caused the pipe to burst in the first place, NMU officials say.
The library building is closed until at least noon Tuesday.
The LRC basement is the heart of operations for WiMAX in Marquette County. The university and schools across the area--including Marquette, Ishpeming and Negaunee--lost access to the internet when power was cut to the building, but officials were able to reconnect it after about an hour.
Water has been restored in the LRC, and clean-up inside and outside the building continues.
