A typical morning for most students is full of shower taking, teeth brushing and face washing. However, students in Bragaw Residence Hall — which has an occupancy level of 768 — were halted in their morning routine Monday.

Bragaw, along with Witherspoon Student Center, had no running water.

According to Scott Adams, a maintenance mechanic for campus central plumbing, a water pipe at the Dan Allen Drive and Sullivan Drive intersection cracked early Monday morning. This crack caused the water outage, and while the exact time of the incident is unknown, Adams estimated it to have occurred around 2 a.m.

While some students were sleeping by that time, others were still awake and were some of the first to notice the absence of water.

Josh Patrick, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, said he was studying for a math test around the time of the water main break.

“It’s a good thing I took my shower already,” Patrick said.

Slumbering students realized the water was not working after waking up in the morning.

“You know when you wake up two minutes before your alarm goes off because you have to pee really bad,” Lauren Kotwicki, a sophomore in communication, said. “Yeah, it was one of those mornings.”

Kotwicki said she waited until she went to class to use the restroom.

Other students, like Melanie, who declined to provide a last name, felt the lack of water was “inconvenient.”

A sophomore in psychology, Melanie said she had early classes to attend.

“I wanted a shower,” Melanie said. “My hair was greasy, I smelled, my breath smelled. I needed to brush my teeth.”

Students who did not have classes in the morning were still affected by the crack in the water pipe.

“I was laying in my bed and I could hear people peeing upstairs and trying to flush the toilet frantically,” Megan Carson, a sophomore in business management, said.

Carson said she took the initiative to make sure authorities were aware of the situation.

“I went down to the 24-hour desk,” Carson said. “The guy said he did not know when it was going to turn back on.”

According to Adams, the water was turned back on around 9 a.m. The water would have been out for a longer period of time if maintenance had been unable to find the crack, he said.

After maintenance did some troubleshooting, they began to remove bricks from the sidewalk to reach the busted pipe underground, according to Adams.

“We picked up the brick by hand,” Adams said. “You get one started with a screwdriver and then the rest you can get up.”

Adams said occurrences like this do not happen often on campus, but they are inevitable.

“Anything mechanical breaks down,” Adams said.

Students are not the only ones affected by the crack in the water pipe — employees of the Bragaw C-store said they had to get coffee from the West Dunn Building.

According to Randy Lait, business manager of University dining, the convenience store in Bragaw Residence Hall also has water chill compressors in the refrigerators that may have been affected, and will be checked.

As of Monday “no reports of damage have been given to me,” Lait said.

However, for some students, the damage is already done.

Tye Owens, a junior in textile engineering, said he woke up to take a shower and go to class, but soon realized there was no water.

“I gave up and went back to bed,” Owens said.

Students compared the water outage to previous experiences in the residence halls.

Bradley Thomas, a junior in computer science, said he remembered one time when there was no hot water during his freshman year in Carroll Residence Hall.

“My friend did not shower for three days,” Thomas said.

He said he did not take a shower all day Monday, even after a run conditioning class. According to Thomas, the campus is always going to have problems.

“The school is big,” Thomas said. “It’s going to happen.”

According to Adams, the pipe has been fixed.

“Once we fix it and we turn the water back on and it doesn’t leak, there is not much else we can do,” Adams said.