Flash flooding that hit Long Island on the night of Aug. 18 led to several complications for Stony Brook University, leaving several campus structures damaged and — in some cases — without power.
On the morning of Aug. 19, Stony Brook Vice President for Enterprise Risk Management and Chief Security Officer Lawrence Zacarese sent an email to the campus community stating, “Due to regional weather conditions and local flooding, several areas of the campus and buildings have been affected.”
The scope of the damages soon became clear as students began sharing photos and videos of the flooding online. One video appears to show a geyser of water streaming up from the floor in a dormitory and another post shows a group of students taking refuge from the floods in East Side Dining.
One of those students was Emily Adamo, a junior majoring in psychology, who said she had been woken up in the middle of the night by people knocking on her door and screaming to evacuate.
After being woken up, she left Chávez Hall and went to East Side Dining, where she confronted a scene she described as “exhausting.”
“There were so, so many people, and people were sleeping on the floor,” she said.
Adamo said she stayed at East Side Dining for around seven hours — until approximately 9 a.m. — before being told it was safe to go back to her dorm. The only official communication she received from the University was the email from Zacarese. She said that resident assistants and resident hall directors were the ones managing those gathered at East Side Dining, along with officers from the University Police Department.
But Chávez Hall wasn’t the only dorm flooded. In a message sent to the campus community, Stony Brook Vice President for Student Affairs Rick Gatteau and Assistant Vice President for Campus Residences Catherine-Mary Rivera wrote, “The Mendelsohn community, including Ammann, Gray, Irving, and O’Neill halls, do not have power, and the lower level of Ammann and Gray experienced significant flooding.”
To accommodate students whose on-campus housing has been affected by the floods, Gatteau and Rivera wrote that they will be designating additional rooms as temporary triples, with those living in a triple receiving a 15% reduction from their room costs.
Stony Brook had already been struggling with housing demand for the 2024-25 academic year and had implemented a radius policy over the summer that barred incoming freshmen from on-campus housing if they lived close enough to the University.
Gatteau and Rivera also wrote that the University is offering a $5,000 cancellation incentive for continuing undergraduate students who have not yet moved into their room assignments.
This isn’t the first time Stony Brook has struggled with flooding. In September 2021, 400 Stony Brook students were forced out of their residence halls following flood damage from the effects of Hurricane Ida.
On Tuesday afternoon, Stony Brook Interim President Richard McCormick issued a message urging the Stony Brook community to support one another as they navigated the incident.
“Embedded deeply in our campus culture is the belief that Seawolves help Seawolves, and in these days ahead, it will be essential for all of us to support our classmates and colleagues,” McCormick wrote in an email.
Stony Brook officials stressed in a statement that they were working tirelessly to ensure there were as few interruptions as possible to University functions.
“The safety of the entire campus community is our top priority and we are working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to assess the situation and are committed to minimizing disruptions for students who we are looking forward to welcoming to campus as soon as possible,” officials wrote.
Correction Statement: The previous edition of this article stated that the flash flooding happened Aug. 8 instead of Aug. 18.
