On Wednesday, Sept. 1 — the first day of Fordham’s fall semester — Tropical Storm Ida brought heavy rainfall to the Bronx, causing damage and flooding to facilities across the university’s Rose Hill campus. Students living both on and off campus shared their experiences of fighting off flood waters and dealing with damage in their living quarters.

In Queen’s Court, a freshman dormitory, students were evacuated to the McGinley Center during the flooding. Zachary Jones, FCRH ’25, remembers the process as confusing and chaotic. 

“We were playing board games in one of the seminar rooms when the fire alarm went off and everyone started streaming out,” said Jones. “Some people said there was smoke coming from the elevator. I had no idea what was going on, but we were all herded into McGinley. Some of the girls on the fifth floor were saying that there were some leaks.”

For Jones, this was certainly not how he expected his first day of college to go. The stress from class is expected, but not the stress from flooding in his residential hall where most first-year students had just moved in the previous week.

“I’m not gonna lie, I was a little freaked out,” he said. “I was worried my stuff was gonna be destroyed because we don’t have an official renters’ insurance policy. But once we got the information that everything was okay, after about an hour of being in McGinley we were herded back in [to the dorm].”

While Jones said his first day of college was not ideal, he looks back on the event as a humorous bonding experience with his fellow classmates. “Honestly for me, it was this strange thing that happened that upset our first day of classes,” he said. “It wasn’t an extremely traumatizing experience that really impacted me deeply.”

In Walsh Hall, one of the upperclassmen housing options on campus, students were also impacted by floodwaters. Although many of the rooms remained unscathed, the basement was affected.  

“In the safety of my apartment, it was calm with just seeing the rain falling outside and watching movies,” said Maya Dominguez, FCRH ’23. “But out in the hallway and especially in the lobby, it was chaotic because the resident assistants were all running around putting signs up on the elevators and floors not to go to the basement or use the elevators because of the sudden flooding.”

Dominguez said she was in the basement when the flooding began. “The flooding in the basement was so sudden,” she said. “I had just gone down to finish my laundry when all of a sudden there was a puddle of water growing from the drain. I threw my clothes in my bag and went to the elevator, and while I was standing there the water came into the hallway and quickly rose to ankle level.”

Although Walsh has mostly recovered, there are still reminders of the flooding, she said. The basement is dry and accessible again, but the elevator is broken and students have been told that it could remain out of service for up to a month, said Dominguez.

Students living off campus in the nearby Belmont neighborhood did not escape the flooding either. For Kate McNicolas, FCRH ’22, what started out as some light leaking turned into water gushing out of her ceiling. 

“Me and my roommate were chilling in our off-campus apartment around 10 p.m. and then our kitchen light started dripping,” said McNicolas. “We put a bucket under it and planned on calling the landlord the next day. It was no big deal. Then we were sitting back down ready to watch a movie and go to bed, but we heard rushing water and next thing you know, my roommate’s ceiling was leaking so much water. We had to deal with it for almost an hour, filling up buckets and calling the landlord, who said he couldn’t do anything that night.”

The flooding became so extreme that McNicolas had to move her roommate’s belongings out of her room out of fear that they would be destroyed. Her roommate also had to relocate for the night because her room was unlivable. 

While not every Fordham student had to be relocated like McNicolas’ roommate, the sudden flash flooding, ensuing damage and confusion ensured that the first day of this academic year will not be soon forgotten.