Students returned to Willard Residential College this week to find 13 rooms damaged by flooding from a broken pipe.

An elbow connection of a heating pipe on the fifth floor burst in late December and sent water into the rooms, which were on all of Willard’s floors.

“It’s just irritating,” said Jill Slattery, a Speech freshman who lives on the second floor. She said an electric keyboard, a couch, a carpet, floor tiles and some clothing were damaged.

Weinberg freshman Paul Clark, who lives on the fourth floor, added the bad smell to the list.

“Anything that was on the floor got wet,” said Leland Roth, assistant director of the Office of Risk Management, who is coordinating the university’s response to the damage. Besides some floor tiles and a wall on the fifth floor, however, there was “negligible structural damage,” Roth said. “You’re not talking major dollars.”

Students have until Jan. 17 to file claims, so Roth said he could not give a definitive dollar estimate yet. He speculated that the cost to Northwestern could be about $5,000, including manpower, dry cleaning and reimbursements.

Because the university has high insurance deductibles, damage costing as much as $25,000 is covered in-house by the Office of Risk Management and not handled by an outside insurance company.

Roth said the broken pipe, which had been in place for years, was fairly unusual.

“I haven’t seen one like this in the five years I’ve been doing this,” he said.

When pipes break, he said, it is usually soon after they are installed or repaired. He attributed the Willard accident to the “year-in, year-out freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing.”

Kelly Carter, assistant director of Undergraduate Residential Life who also is serving as a liaison between the students and the Office of Risk Management, said that at first many students were “really concerned,” but that since they have returned to campus and seen the damage firsthand, most have calmed down.

“It wasn’t terrible,” Slattery said. “It’s more of an aggravation.”

Clark and Slattery praised the university’s response to the damage, especially the work of Facilities Management’s Dorms and Commons, which cleaned carpets and disinfected rooms.

“They were really helpful,” Clark said.